---
title: After they had wandered on for a long time it began to grow dark. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: After they had wandered on for a long time it began to grow dark. Who acts: birds, wood. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24, 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/pg3454/24/147/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24, sentence 147

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After they had wandered on for a long time it began to grow dark.

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**Who acts:** birds, wood · **What happens:** wander, begin, grow · **To what, where:** long time

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (birds, wood), 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:pg3454:24:147
# text = After they had wandered on for a long time it began to grow dark.
1	After	after	SCONJ	IN	_	4	mark	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	wandered	wander	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	on	on	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
6	for	for	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	acl:relcl	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	grow	grow	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
14	dark	dark	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wander** | past · perfect | birds *= bird* |  |  |  | time |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **begin** | past | wood | a long time *not said here* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **grow** | to-infinitive | wood *not said here* |  |  |  |  | dark *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=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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