---
title: The Scarecrow climbed up the ladder first, but he was so awkward tha… — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz · tree and pragmatics
description: The Scarecrow climbed up the ladder first, but he was so awkward that Dorothy had to follow close behind and keep him from falling off. Who acts: Scarecrow, Woodman, Dorothy. A sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter XX. The Dainty China Country, with its dependency tree a
---

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# The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapter XX. The Dainty China Country, sentence 10

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The Scarecrow climbed up the ladder first, but he was so awkward that Dorothy had to follow close behind and keep him from falling off.

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**Who acts:** Scarecrow, Woodman, Dorothy · **What happens:** climb up, be, have, follow, keep, fall off · **To what, where:** ladder, Woodman

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This is a sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter XX. The Dainty China Country. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Scarecrow, Woodman, Dorothy), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg55:1456`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg55:22:10
# text = The Scarecrow climbed up the ladder first, but he was so awkward that Dorothy had to follow close behind and keep him from falling off.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Scarecrow	scarecrow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	climbed	climb	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	up	up	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	ladder	ladder	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	3	advmod	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
12	so	so	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	awkward	awkward	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	_
14	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
15	Dorothy	Dorothy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
16	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	ccomp	_	_
17	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	mark	_	_
18	follow	follow	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	xcomp	_	_
19	close	close	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	behind	behind	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
21	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
22	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	conj	_	_
23	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	obj	_	_
24	from	from	SCONJ	IN	_	25	mark	_	_
25	falling	fall	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	22	advcl	_	_
26	off	off	ADP	RP	_	25	compound:prt	_	_
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **climb up** | past | the Scarecrow | the ladder |  |  |  | first *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Initial\_Location ladder=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | past | Woodman |  |  |  |  | awkward *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **have** | past | Dorothy |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **follow** | to-infinitive | Dorothy *not said here* |  |  |  |  | behind *property* | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **keep** | infinitive | Dorothy *not said here* | Woodman |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Theme |
| 6 | **fall off** | gerund | Dorothy *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1-1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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