---
title: The natives came by degrees to be less fearful of danger from me. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The natives came by degrees to be less fearful of danger from me. Who acts: natives. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Chapter III, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Chapter III, sentence 2

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The natives came by degrees to be less fearful of danger from me.

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**Who acts:** natives · **What happens:** come, be

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Chapter III. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (natives), 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:pg503:45:2
# text = The natives came by degrees to be less fearful of danger from me.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	natives	native	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	by	by	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	degrees	degree	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
7	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	cop	_	_
8	less	less	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	9	advmod	_	_
9	fearful	fearful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	advcl	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	danger	danger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
12	from	from	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | the natives |  |  |  |  | by degrees | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme by degree=Location |
| 2 | **is** | to-infinitive | the natives *not said here* |  |  |  |  | of danger from me; fearful, less *property* | tree rules |

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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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