---
title: A little way off the crocodile lay blinking in the sun, with his sha… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: A little way off the crocodile lay blinking in the sun, with his sharp teeth and whity-yellow jaws wide open. Who acts: crocodile. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 26, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/26/32/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Brown Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/) / [The Brown Fairy Book, part 26](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/26/) / 32

# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 26, sentence 32

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A little way off the crocodile lay blinking in the sun, with his sharp teeth and whity-yellow jaws wide open.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** crocodile · **What happens:** lie, blink · **To what, where:** sun

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 26. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (crocodile), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg3282:2325`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg3282:26:32
# text = A little way off the crocodile lay blinking in the sun, with his sharp teeth and whity-yellow jaws wide open.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl:unmarked	_	_
4	off	off	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	crocodile	crocodile	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	lay	lie	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	blinking	blink	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	7	xcomp	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	sun	sun	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
14	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
15	sharp	sharp	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	teeth	tooth	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
18	whity	whity	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	compound	_	_
19	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	18	punct	_	_
20	yellow	yellow	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	jaws	jaw	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	conj	_	_
22	wide	wide	ADV	RB	_	23	advmod	_	_
23	open	open	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	acl	_	_
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lie** | past | the crocodile |  |  |  |  | off *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **blink** | gerund | the crocodile *not said here* |  |  | the sun |  | with sun's sharp teeth and yellow jaws | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in sun=Location |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 31](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/26/31/)
- next →: [sentence 33](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/26/33/)
- ↑ back to [The Brown Fairy Book, part 26](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/26/)