---
title: Safe! why only the tops of the trees remained above that sea of wate… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Safe! why only the tops of the trees remained above that sea of water, and these were fast disappearing. Who acts: tops, these. 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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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 8, sentence 97

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Safe! why only the tops of the trees remained above that sea of water, and these were fast disappearing.

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**Who acts:** tops, these · **What happens:** remain, disappear · **To what, where:** sea

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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 (tops, these), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg3282:728`): 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:pg3282:8:97
# text = Safe! why only the tops of the trees remained above that sea of water, and these were fast disappearing.
1	Safe	safe	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
2	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
3	why	why	INTJ	UH	_	10	discourse	_	_
4	only	only	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	tops	top	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	trees	tree	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nmod	_	_
10	remained	remain	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	1	parataxis	_	_
11	above	above	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	13	det	_	_
13	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
18	these	this	PRON	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	21	nsubj	_	_
19	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	aux	_	_
20	fast	fast	ADV	RB	_	21	advmod	_	_
21	disappearing	disappear	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	10	conj	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **remain** | past | the tops of the trees |  |  | that sea of water |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme above sea=Location |
| 2 | **disappear** | past · progressive | these |  |  |  |  | fast *property* | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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