---
title: Then a strange thing happened. — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz · tree and pragmatics
description: Then a strange thing happened. Who acts: strange thing. A sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter I. The Cyclone, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapter I. The Cyclone, sentence 41

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Then a strange thing happened.

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**Who acts:** strange thing · **What happens:** happen

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This is a sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter I. The Cyclone. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (strange thing), 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:pg55:2:41
# text = Then a strange thing happened.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	strange	strange	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	happened	happen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **happen** | past | a strange thing |  |  |  | then |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «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 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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