---
title: When they came up to him and dismounted, he counted forty of them. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: When they came up to him and dismounted, he counted forty of them. Who acts: men, Baba. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Forty Thieves, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Forty Thieves, sentence 5

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When they came up to him and dismounted, he counted forty of them.

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**Who acts:** men, Baba · **What happens:** come up, dismount, count · **To what, where:** Baba, forty

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Forty Thieves. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (men, Baba), 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:pg503:34:5
# text = When they came up to him and dismounted, he counted forty of them.
1	When	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	_
4	up	up	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obl	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	dismounted	dismount	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	counted	count	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	forty	forty	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	11	obj	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come up** | past | men *= man* |  | Baba |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to he=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **dismount** | past | men *= man* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn disassemble-23.3 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **count** | past | Baba | forty of men |  |  |  |  | vn multiply-108 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent forty=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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