---
title: They placed the coffin on the ground, and he approached it and took… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They placed the coffin on the ground, and he approached it and took off the cover. Who acts: balls, man. 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 146

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They placed the coffin on the ground, and he approached it and took off the cover.

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**Who acts:** balls, man · **What happens:** place, approach, take off · **To what, where:** coffin, ground, cover

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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 (balls, man), 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:pg503:13:146
# text = They placed the coffin on the ground, and he approached it and took off the cover.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	placed	place	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	coffin	coffin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	on	on	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	approached	approach	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	conj	_	_
15	off	off	ADP	RP	_	14	compound:prt	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	cover	cover	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **place** | past | balls *= ball* | the coffin |  | the ground |  |  | vn put-9.1-2 «NP V PP.destination NP»: agent=Agent coffin=Theme on ground=Destination |
| 2 | **approach** | past | man | coffin |  |  |  |  | vn confront-98 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 3 | **take off** | past | man *not said here* | the cover |  |  |  |  | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent cover=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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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