---
title: Ah! how merrily the sailors sang as they flew over the glassy sea! — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Ah! how merrily the sailors sang as they flew over the glassy sea! Who acts: sailors. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Bronze Ring, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Bronze Ring, sentence 224

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Ah! how merrily the sailors sang as they flew over the glassy sea!

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**Who acts:** sailors · **What happens:** sing, fly · **To what, where:** glassy sea

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Bronze Ring. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sailors), 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:pg503:2:224
# text = Ah! how merrily the sailors sang as they flew over the glassy sea!
1	Ah	ah	INTJ	UH	_	7	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
3	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	4	advmod	_	_
4	merrily	merrily	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	sailors	sailor	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	sang	sing	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	flew	fly	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	_
11	over	over	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	glassy	glassy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sing** *speech: express* | past | the sailors |  |  |  |  | merrily *property* | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **fly** | past | sailors *= sailor* |  |  | the glassy sea |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme over sea=Location |

<!-- .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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