---
title: Soon the man returned, with the girl walking behind him. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Soon the man returned, with the girl walking behind him. Who acts: man, girl. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23, 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/pg3454/23/11/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23, sentence 11

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Soon the man returned, with the girl walking behind him.

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**Who acts:** man, girl · **What happens:** return, walk

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man, girl), 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:pg3454:23:11
# text = Soon the man returned, with the girl walking behind him.
1	Soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	returned	return	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	with	with	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
9	walking	walk	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	acl	_	_
10	behind	behind	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **return** | past | the man |  |  |  |  | with the girl; soon *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **walk** | gerund | the girl *not said here* |  |  |  |  | behind man | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme behind he=Trajectory |

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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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