---
title: No sooner were their faces touched with the sun’s rays than they wer… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: No sooner were their faces touched with the sun’s rays than they were up and off. Who acts: men, sun. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 16, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 16, sentence 93

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No sooner were their faces touched with the sun’s rays than they were up and off.

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**Who acts:** men, sun · **What happens:** be, touch, ray · **To what, where:** faces

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (men, sun), 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:pg3454:16:93
# text = No sooner were their faces touched with the sun’s rays than they were up and off.
1	No	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	2	det	_	_
2	sooner	soon	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	5	advmod	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	faces	face	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	_
6	touched	touch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	acl	_	_
7	with	with	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	sun	sun	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’s	's	PART	POS	_	9	case	_	_
11	rays	ray	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	_
12	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
13	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
14	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
15	up	up	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	off	off	ADV	RB	_	15	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past |  | men's faces |  |  |  | soon *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **touch** | participle |  | men's faces *not said here* |  |  |  | with the sun's rays | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | past | men *= man* |  |  |  |  | up *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **ray** |  | the sun |  |  |  |  |  | nom ray «phenomenon transitive»: poss=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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