---
title: But beside the brown otter, a huge shadow came stealing along--the s… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But beside the brown otter, a huge shadow came stealing along--the shadow of the giant. Who acts: huge shadow. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 10, 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/pg3454/10/17/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 10, sentence 17

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But beside the brown otter, a huge shadow came stealing along--the shadow of the giant.

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**Who acts:** huge shadow · **What happens:** come, steal, shadow · **To what, where:** shadow, giant

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 10. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (huge shadow), 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:pg3454:10:17
# text = But beside the brown otter, a huge shadow came stealing along--the shadow of the giant.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
2	beside	beside	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	brown	brown	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	otter	otter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	huge	huge	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	shadow	shadow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	stealing	steal	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	10	xcomp	_	_
12	along	along	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	shadow	shadow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
16	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	giant	giant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | a huge shadow |  |  |  |  | beside the brown otter | tree rules |
| 2 | **steal** | gerund | a huge shadow *not said here* | the shadow of the giant |  |  |  | along *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **shadow** |  |  | the giant |  |  |  |  | nom shadow «state transitive»: of=patient |

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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 Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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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