---
title: But months passed, and years passed, and though he travelled over hu… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But months passed, and years passed, and though he travelled over hundreds of miles, he never saw any traces of it. Who acts: months, years, cat. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 29, 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/pg3282/29/15/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 29, sentence 15

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But months passed, and years passed, and though he travelled over hundreds of miles, he never saw any traces of it.

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**Who acts:** months, years, cat · **What happens:** pass, travel, not see · **To what, where:** hundreds, traces

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 29. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (months, years, cat), 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:pg3282:29:15
# text = But months passed, and years passed, and though he travelled over hundreds of miles, he never saw any traces of it.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	months	month	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	passed	pass	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
6	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	passed	pass	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
10	though	though	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	travelled	travel	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	20	advcl	_	_
13	over	over	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	hundreds	hundred	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obl	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	miles	mile	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
18	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
19	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	20	advmod	_	_
20	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
21	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	22	det	_	_
22	traces	trace	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obj	_	_
23	of	of	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
24	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pass** | past | months |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **pass** | past | years |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **travel** | past | cat |  |  | hundreds of miles |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme over hundred=Trajectory |
| 4 | **not** **see** | past | cat | any traces of ball |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer trace=Stimulus |

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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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