---
title: Crossing this open space was a beautiful milk-white cow with a wreat… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Crossing this open space was a beautiful milk-white cow with a wreath of flowers round her neck. Who acts: Crossing. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 21, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 21, sentence 39

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Crossing this open space was a beautiful milk-white cow with a wreath of flowers round her neck.

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**Who acts:** Crossing · **What happens:** cross, be · **To what, where:** open space, beautiful white cow

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 21. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Crossing), 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:pg3282:21:39
# text = Crossing this open space was a beautiful milk-white cow with a wreath of flowers round her neck.
1	Crossing	cross	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	11	csubj	_	_
2	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	4	det	_	_
3	open	open	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	space	space	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obj	_	_
5	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
7	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
8	milk	milk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	cow	cow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
12	with	with	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	wreath	wreath	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	flowers	flower	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nmod	_	_
17	round	round	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	19	nmod:poss	_	_
19	neck	neck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cross** | gerund |  | this open space |  |  |  |  | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent space=Patient |
| 2 | **is a** | past | Crossing | a beautiful white cow |  |  |  | with a wreath of flowers round cow's neck | tree rules |

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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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