---
title: No man was present, but only some women spinning at their wheels. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: No man was present, but only some women spinning at their wheels. Who acts: man, women. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 36, 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/pg3454/36/42/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 36, sentence 42

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No man was present, but only some women spinning at their wheels.

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**Who acts:** man, women · **What happens:** be, spin · **To what, where:** wheels

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 36. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man, women), 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:pg3454:36:42
# text = No man was present, but only some women spinning at their wheels.
1	No	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	2	det	_	_
2	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	present	present	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
7	only	only	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
8	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	9	det	_	_
9	women	woman	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	parataxis	_	_
10	spinning	spin	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	acl	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	wheels	wheel	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | no man |  |  |  |  | present *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **spin** | gerund | some women *not said here* |  |  | people's wheels |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V PP.trajectory»: agent=Theme at wheel=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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