---
title: The wolves howled, the ravens screamed, the sky seemed on fire. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The wolves howled, the ravens screamed, the sky seemed on fire. Who acts: wolves, ravens, sky. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 10, 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/pg5615/10/57/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 10, sentence 57

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The wolves howled, the ravens screamed, the sky seemed on fire.

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**Who acts:** wolves, ravens, sky · **What happens:** howl, scream, seem · **To what, where:** fire · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 10. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wolves, ravens, sky), 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:pg5615:10:57
# text = The wolves howled, the ravens screamed, the sky seemed on fire.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	wolves	wolf	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	howled	howl	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	ravens	raven	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	screamed	scream	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	sky	sky	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
11	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	ccomp	_	_
12	on	on	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	fire	fire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **howl** | past | the wolves |  |  |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **scream** *speech: express* | past | the ravens |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **seem** | past | the sky |  |  | fire |  |  | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: 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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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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