---
title: But, as he spoke, something cold touched him, and quickly he glanced… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But, as he spoke, something cold touched him, and quickly he glanced down at his feet. Who acts: water, something. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 8, 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/pg3282/8/103/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 8, sentence 103

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But, as he spoke, something cold touched him, and quickly he glanced down at his feet.

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**Who acts:** water, something · **What happens:** speak, touch, glance down · **To what, where:** water · **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 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (water, something), 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:pg3282:8:103
# text = But, as he spoke, something cold touched him, and quickly he glanced down at his feet.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	spoke	speak	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
7	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	9	nsubj	_	_
8	cold	cold	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
9	touched	touch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
13	quickly	quickly	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
14	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	glanced	glance	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	_
16	down	down	ADP	RP	_	15	compound:prt	_	_
17	at	at	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	19	nmod:poss	_	_
19	feet	foot	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* | past | water |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **touch** | past | something | water |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme he=Co-Theme |
| 3 | **glance down** | past | water |  |  |  |  | at water's feet; quickly *property* | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at foot=Theme |

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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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