---
title: The snow-child bent its head as if it had been really alive. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The snow-child bent its head as if it had been really alive. Who acts: snow child, head. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 16, 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/pg5615/16/22/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 16, sentence 22

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The snow-child bent its head as if it had been really alive.

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**Who acts:** snow child, head · **What happens:** bend, be · **To what, where:** head

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (snow child, head), 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:pg5615:16:22
# text = The snow-child bent its head as if it had been really alive.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
2	snow	snow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	bent	bend	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
6	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
9	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
11	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
12	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	14	cop	_	_
13	really	really	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
14	alive	alive	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **bend** | participle | the snow child | surprise's head |  |  |  |  | vn knead-26.5 «NP V NP.material»: agent=Agent head=Material |
| 2 | **is** | past · perfect | head |  |  |  |  | alive *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 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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