---
title: At last, the night falling, they returned desolate to Hamel. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: At last, the night falling, they returned desolate to Hamel. Who acts: children. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Ratcatcher, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Ratcatcher, sentence 89

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At last, the night falling, they returned desolate to Hamel.

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**Who acts:** children · **What happens:** fall, return, desolate · **To what, where:** last, Hamel

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Ratcatcher. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (children), 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:pg540:32:89
# text = At last, the night falling, they returned desolate to Hamel.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl:unmarked	_	_
6	falling	fall	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	returned	return	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	desolate	desolate	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	Hamel	Hamel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fall** | gerund | children *= child* *not said here* |  |  |  | night |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **return** | past | children *= child* |  |  | last |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **desolate** | infinitive | children *= child* *not said here* |  | Hamel |  |  |  | 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 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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