---
title: In this way the months slipped by, and Christmas came round again. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: In this way the months slipped by, and Christmas came round again. Who acts: Christmas. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 20, 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/pg3282/20/21/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 20, sentence 21

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In this way the months slipped by, and Christmas came round again.

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**Who acts:** Christmas · **What happens:** slip by, come round · **To what, where:** months, way

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 20. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Christmas), 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:pg3282:20:21
# text = In this way the months slipped by, and Christmas came round again.
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	det	_	_
3	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	months	month	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	conj	_	_
6	slipped	slip	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	acl	_	_
7	by	by	ADP	IN	_	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	Christmas	Christmas	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
11	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	round	round	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
13	again	again	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **slip by** | participle |  | the months *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1-1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 2 | **come round** | past | Christmas |  |  | this way and the months | again | round *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in way=Location |

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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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