---
title: The staircases were of crystal, and every separate stair sang like a… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The staircases were of crystal, and every separate stair sang like a woodland bird as you put your foot on it. Who acts: staircases, separate stair, you. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 34, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 34, sentence 5

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The staircases were of crystal, and every separate stair sang like a woodland bird as you put your foot on it.

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**Who acts:** staircases, separate stair, you · **What happens:** be, sing, put · **To what, where:** foot, stair

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 34. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (staircases, separate stair, you), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg3454:3023`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg3454:34:5
# text = The staircases were of crystal, and every separate stair sang like a woodland bird as you put your foot on it.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	staircases	staircase	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	crystal	crystal	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
8	every	every	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	10	det	_	_
9	separate	separate	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	stair	stair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
11	sang	sing	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
12	like	like	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	woodland	woodland	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	compound	_	_
15	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
16	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
17	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
18	put	put	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	_
19	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	20	nmod:poss	_	_
20	foot	foot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	_
21	on	on	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	obl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the staircases |  |  |  |  | of crystal | tree rules |
| 2 | **sing** *speech: express* | past | every separate stair |  |  |  |  | like a woodland bird | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **put** | past | you | your foot |  | stair |  |  | vn put-9.1-2 «NP V PP.destination NP»: agent=Agent foot=Theme on it=Destination |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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