---
title: I had not been long there when I saw three witches coming in with th… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: I had not been long there when I saw three witches coming in with three bags of gold. Who acts: I, three witches. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Black Thief and Knight of the Glen., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Black Thief and Knight of the Glen., sentence 70

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I had not been long there when I saw three witches coming in with three bags of gold.

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**Who acts:** I, three witches · **What happens:** have, not be, see, come in · **To what, where:** three witches

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Black Thief and Knight of the Glen.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, three witches), 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:pg540:8:70
# text = I had not been long there when I saw three witches coming in with three bags of gold.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
4	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	6	cop	_	_
5	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	6	advmod	_	_
6	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	2	advmod	_	_
7	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	9	advmod	_	_
8	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
10	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	11	nummod	_	_
11	witches	witch	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	_
12	coming	come	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	11	acl	_	_
13	in	in	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
14	with	with	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	16	nummod	_	_
16	bags	bag	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obl	_	_
17	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	gold	gold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **not** **is** | participle |  |  |  |  |  | long, there *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **see** | past | I | three witches |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer witch=Stimulus |
| 4 | **come in** | gerund | three witches *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with three bags of gold | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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