---
title: She reached the birch tree, and laying aside her finery, she said: — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: She reached the birch tree, and laying aside her finery, she said: Who acts: daughter. 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 96

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She reached the birch tree, and laying aside her finery, she said:

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**Who acts:** daughter · **What happens:** reach, lay, say · **To what, where:** birch tree, finery · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (daughter), 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:pg540:14:96
# text = She reached the birch tree, and laying aside her finery, she said:
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	reached	reach	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	birch	birch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	compound	_	_
5	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
8	laying	lay	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	14	advcl	_	_
9	aside	aside	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
10	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	finery	finery	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
13	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reach** | past | daughter | the birch tree |  |  |  |  | vn body\_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Agent tree=Theme |
| 2 | **lay** | gerund | daughter *not said here* | daughter's finery |  |  |  | aside *property* | vn create-26.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent finery=Result |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | daughter |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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