---
title: When the little girl saw them coming she was afraid. — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz · tree and pragmatics
description: When the little girl saw them coming she was afraid. Who acts: little girl, crows, girl. A sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter XII. The Search for the Wicked Witch, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg55/14/44/)

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# The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapter XII. The Search for the Wicked Witch, sentence 44

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When the little girl saw them coming she was afraid.

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**Who acts:** little girl, crows, girl · **What happens:** see, come, be · **To what, where:** crows

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This is a sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter XII. The Search for the Wicked Witch. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (little girl, crows, 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:pg55:14:44
# text = When the little girl saw them coming she was afraid.
1	When	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	_
7	coming	come	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	5	xcomp	_	_
8	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	afraid	afraid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** | past | the little girl | crows *= crow* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **come** | gerund | crows *= crow* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | past | girl |  |  |  |  | afraid *property* | 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 Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Project Gutenberg book 55 (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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