---
title: The donkey was lying on a soft cool bed of moss near a stream, rolli… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The donkey was lying on a soft cool bed of moss near a stream, rolling herself backwards and forwards from pleasure. Who acts: donkey. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 6, 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/pg3454/6/39/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 6, sentence 39

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The donkey was lying on a soft cool bed of moss near a stream, rolling herself backwards and forwards from pleasure.

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**Who acts:** donkey · **What happens:** lie, roll · **To what, where:** soft cool bed, donkey

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (donkey), 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:pg3454:6:39
# text = The donkey was lying on a soft cool bed of moss near a stream, rolling herself backwards and forwards from pleasure.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	donkey	donkey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	lying	lie	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	on	on	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
7	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
8	cool	cool	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	bed	bed	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	moss	moss	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	_
12	near	near	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	stream	stream	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
16	rolling	roll	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	conj	_	_
17	herself	herself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	16	obj	_	_
18	backwards	backwards	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
20	forwards	forwards	ADV	RB	_	22	advmod	_	_
21	from	from	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	pleasure	pleasure	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lie** | past · progressive | the donkey |  |  | a soft cool bed of moss |  | near a stream | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on bed=Location |
| 2 | **roll** | gerund | the donkey *not said here* | donkey |  |  |  | backwards *property* | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent herself=Agent |

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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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