---
title: Then she went back to the birch tree and laid the branch upon the gr… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Then she went back to the birch tree and laid the branch upon the grave. Who acts: girl. 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 42

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Then she went back to the birch tree and laid the branch upon the grave.

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**Who acts:** girl · **What happens:** go back, lay · **To what, where:** branch, grave

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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 (girl), 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:pg540:14:42
# text = Then she went back to the birch tree and laid the branch upon the grave.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
2	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	back	back	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	birch	birch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	_
8	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	laid	lay	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	branch	branch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	grave	grave	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go back** | past | girl |  |  |  | then | to the birch tree *result* | vn convert-26.6.2 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Patient to tree=Result |
| 2 | **lay** | past | girl *not said here* | the branch |  | the grave |  |  | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent branch=Theme upon grave=Destination |

<!-- .note -->
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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