---
title: The big seals in motion, Like waves of the ocean, Or gouty feet pran… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The big seals in motion, Like waves of the ocean, Or gouty feet prancing, Came heading the gay fish, Crabs, lobsters, and cray-fish, Determined on dancing. Who acts: gouty feet, Came. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 18, with its dependency tree and the
---

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 18, sentence 37

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The big seals in motion, Like waves of the ocean, Or gouty feet prancing, Came heading the gay fish, Crabs, lobsters, and cray-fish, Determined on dancing.

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**Who acts:** gouty feet, Came · **What happens:** prance, head, lobster, determine, wave · **To what, where:** gay fish, cray fish, dancing, ocean

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 18. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (gouty feet, Came), 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:pg3454:18:37
# text = The big seals in motion, Like waves of the ocean, Or gouty feet prancing, Came heading the gay fish, Crabs, lobsters, and cray-fish, Determined on dancing.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	seals	seal	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	_
4	in	in	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	motion	motion	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	Like	like	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	waves	wave	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	conj	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	ocean	ocean	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	Or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	gouty	gouty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	feet	foot	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	conj	_	_
16	prancing	prance	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	15	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
18	Came	Came	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	26	nsubj	_	_
19	heading	head	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	18	acl	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
21	gay	gay	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
24	Crabs	Crabs	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	18	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	26	punct	_	_
26	lobsters	lobster	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	31	punct	_	_
28	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	31	cc	_	_
29	cray	cray	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	31	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
30	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	29	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
31	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
32	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	33	punct	_	_
33	Determined	determine	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	31	acl	_	_
34	on	on	ADP	IN	_	35	case	_	_
35	dancing	dancing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	33	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
36	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **prance** | gerund | gouty feet *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **head** | gerund | Came and Crabs *not said here* | the gay fish |  |  |  |  | vn conduct-111.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fish=Theme |
| 3 | **lobster** | present | Came and Crabs |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **determine** | participle |  | cray fish *not said here* |  | dancing |  |  | vn conjecture-29.5 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **wave** |  |  | the ocean |  |  |  |  | nom wave «event transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .note -->
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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