---
title: ‘Yes; now the crows are close behind us,’ said the man. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Yes; now the crows are close behind us,’ said the man. Who acts: crows, man. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Farmer Weatherbeard, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, Farmer Weatherbeard, sentence 82

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‘Yes; now the crows are close behind us,’ said the man.

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**Who acts:** crows, man · **What happens:** be, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Farmer Weatherbeard. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (crows, man), 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:pg540:43:82
# text = ‘Yes; now the crows are close behind us,’ said the man.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Yes	yes	INTJ	UH	Polarity=Pos	8	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	8	advmod	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	crows	crow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
7	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
8	close	close	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	13	advmod	_	_
9	behind	behind	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | the crows |  |  |  | now | behind us; close *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the man |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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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