---
title: ‘They threw me across the river to make a bridge of me.’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘They threw me across the river to make a bridge of me.’ Who acts: preparations. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Birch, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Wonderful Birch, sentence 140

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‘They threw me across the river to make a bridge of me.’

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**Who acts:** preparations · **What happens:** throw, make · **To what, where:** me, river, bridge

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Birch. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (preparations), 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:pg540:14:140
# text = ‘They threw me across the river to make a bridge of me.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	threw	throw	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	across	across	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	river	river	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	bridge	bridge	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	of	of	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	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **throw** | past | preparations *= preparation* | me |  | the river |  |  | vn throw-17.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Theme |
| 2 | **make** | to-infinitive | preparations *= preparation* *not said here* | a bridge of me |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset bridge=Product |

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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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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