---
title: When it got late, six big men came in carrying a coffin. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: When it got late, six big men came in carrying a coffin. Who acts: shudder, six big men. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, sentence 144

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When it got late, six big men came in carrying a coffin.

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**Who acts:** shudder, six big men · **What happens:** get, come, carry · **To what, where:** coffin

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (shudder, six big men), 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:pg503:13:144
# text = When it got late, six big men came in carrying a coffin.
1	When	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	got	get	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	advcl	_	_
4	late	late	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
6	six	six	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	nummod	_	_
7	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
9	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	in	in	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
11	carrying	carry	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	9	advcl	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	coffin	coffin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **get** | past | shudder |  |  |  |  | late *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **come** | past | six big men |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **carry** | gerund | six big men *not said here* | a coffin |  |  |  |  | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent coffin=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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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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