---
title: So gaily the three husbands knocked down their three wives, who fell… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: So gaily the three husbands knocked down their three wives, who fell dead to the ground. Who acts: gaily three husbands. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 12, 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/pg3454/12/71/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 12, sentence 71

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
So gaily the three husbands knocked down their three wives, who fell dead to the ground.

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**Who acts:** gaily three husbands · **What happens:** knock down, fall · **To what, where:** three wives

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (gaily three husbands), 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:pg3454:12:71
# text = So gaily the three husbands knocked down their three wives, who fell dead to the ground.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
2	gaily	gaily	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	5	nummod	_	_
5	husbands	husband	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	_
6	knocked	knock	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	acl	_	_
7	down	down	ADP	RP	_	6	compound:prt	_	_
8	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
9	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	10	nummod	_	_
10	wives	wife	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	13	nsubj	_	_
13	fell	fall	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	dead	dead	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	xcomp	_	_
15	to	to	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **knock down** | participle | the gaily three husbands *not said here* | husbands's three wives |  |  |  |  | vn split-23.2 «NP V NP apart»: agent=Agent wife=Patient |
| 2 | **fall** | past | the gaily three husbands |  |  |  |  | to the ground; dead *property* | vn acquiesce-95.1-1 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent to ground=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 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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