---
title: They sprung from the front of each ear, and met at the back. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They sprung from the front of each ear, and met at the back. Who acts: baby. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 13, 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/pg3454/13/82/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 13, sentence 82

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They sprung from the front of each ear, and met at the back.

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**Who acts:** baby · **What happens:** spring, meet · **To what, where:** front, back

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 13. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (baby), 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:pg3454:13:82
# text = They sprung from the front of each ear, and met at the back.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sprung	spring	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
3	from	from	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	front	front	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	each	each	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	8	det	_	_
8	ear	ear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	met	meet	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
12	at	at	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	back	back	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **spring** | participle | baby |  |  | the front of each ear |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme from front=Trajectory |
| 2 | **meet** | past | baby *not said here* |  |  | the back |  |  | vn meet-36.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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