---
title: It blew down woods and houses, and when they were above the sea the… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It blew down woods and houses, and when they were above the sea the ships were wrecked by hundreds. Who acts: storm, brothers, hundreds. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, sentence 108

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It blew down woods and houses, and when they were above the sea the ships were wrecked by hundreds.

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**Who acts:** storm, brothers, hundreds · **What happens:** blow down, be, wreck · **To what, where:** woods, sea

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, East of the Sun and West of the Moon. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (storm, brothers, hundreds), 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:pg503:4:108
# text = It blew down woods and houses, and when they were above the sea the ships were wrecked by hundreds.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	blew	blow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	down	down	ADP	RP	_	2	compound:prt	_	_
4	woods	wood	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	houses	house	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
9	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	14	advmod	_	_
10	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
11	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
12	above	above	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj:pass	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	ships	ship	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	nsubj	_	_
17	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	aux:pass	_	_
18	wrecked	wreck	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	conj	_	_
19	by	by	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	hundreds	hundred	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **blow down** | past | storm | woods and houses |  |  |  |  | vn split-23.2 «NP V NP apart»: agent=Agent wood=Patient |
| 2 | **is** | past | brothers *= brother* |  |  | the sea |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **wreck** | past · passive | hundreds | the sea |  |  |  |  | vn destroy-44 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent subject=Patient |

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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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