---
title: Their lives were coming to their end, but they had never beheld face… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Their lives were coming to their end, but they had never beheld face of child of their own. Who acts: lives, drums. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/2/22/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 2, sentence 22

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Their lives were coming to their end, but they had never beheld face of child of their own.

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**Who acts:** lives, drums · **What happens:** come, not behold · **To what, where:** end, face

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lives, drums), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg3282:2:22
# text = Their lives were coming to their end, but they had never beheld face of child of their own.
1	Their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	lives	life	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	coming	come	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	end	end	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
10	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	beheld	behold	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	4	conj	_	_
14	face	face	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl:unmarked	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod	_	_
17	of	of	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	19	nmod:poss	_	_
19	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past · progressive | drums's lives |  |  |  | to drums's end |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to end=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **not** **behold** | past · perfect | drums *= drum* | face of child of drums's own |  |  |  |  | vn sight-30.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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