---
title: There were legs and shoulders like mutton but smaller than the wings… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: There were legs and shoulders like mutton but smaller than the wings of a lark. Who acts: legs. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Chapter I, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Chapter I, sentence 39

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There were legs and shoulders like mutton but smaller than the wings of a lark.

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**Who acts:** legs · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Chapter I. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (legs), 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:pg503:43:39
# text = There were legs and shoulders like mutton but smaller than the wings of a lark.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	legs	leg	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	shoulders	shoulder	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	conj	_	_
6	like	like	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	mutton	mutton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	smaller	small	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	3	conj	_	_
10	than	than	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	wings	wing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	lark	lark	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | legs and shoulders like mutton |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=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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