---
title: But the nearer he came the more dreadful he thought the kiln looked. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the nearer he came the more dreadful he thought the kiln looked. Who acts: Walter, kiln. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 8, 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/pg3454/8/43/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 8, sentence 43

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But the nearer he came the more dreadful he thought the kiln looked.

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**Who acts:** Walter, kiln · **What happens:** come, think, look · **To what, where:** dreadful · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Walter, kiln), 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:pg3454:8:43
# text = But the nearer he came the more dreadful he thought the kiln looked.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	nearer	near	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	5	advmod	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	8	advmod	_	_
8	dreadful	dreadful	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	kiln	kiln	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | Walter | the dreadful |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location dreadful=Theme |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* | past | Walter | the dreadful *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V NP ADJ»: agent=Agent dreadful=Attribute clause=Theme |
| 3 | **look** | past | the kiln |  |  |  |  |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |

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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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