---
title: She was half-drowned in tears, crying out: — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: She was half-drowned in tears, crying out: A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Little Thumb, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Little Thumb, sentence 37

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She was half-drowned in tears, crying out:

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**What happens:** drown, cry out · **To what, where:** woman, tears

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Little Thumb. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg503:33:37
# text = She was half-drowned in tears, crying out:
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj:pass	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux:pass	_	_
3	half	half	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	5	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	drowned	drown	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	tears	tear	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	crying	cry	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	advcl	_	_
10	out	out	ADP	RP	_	9	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **drown** | past · passive |  | woman |  | tears |  |  | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient |
| 2 | **cry out** *speech: express* | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=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 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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