---
title: The time came at last when he sent a message to his father, saying: — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The time came at last when he sent a message to his father, saying: Who acts: time, dog. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 25, 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/pg3282/25/15/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 25, sentence 15

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The time came at last when he sent a message to his father, saying:

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**Who acts:** time, dog · **What happens:** come, send, say · **To what, where:** last, message, father · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 25. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (time, dog), 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:pg3282:25:15
# text = The time came at last when he sent a message to his father, saying:
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	at	at	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	obl	_	_
6	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	8	mark	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	sent	send	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	advcl	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	message	message	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
15	saying	say	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | the time |  |  | last |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme at last=Location |
| 2 | **send** | past | dog | a message | dog's father |  |  |  | vn confine-92-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent message=Theme to father=Destination |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | gerund | dog *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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