---
title: But he was a powerful swimmer, and struggled hard to reach the shore. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But he was a powerful swimmer, and struggled hard to reach the shore. Who acts: couple, powerful swimmer. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 3, sentence 65

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But he was a powerful swimmer, and struggled hard to reach the shore.

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**Who acts:** couple, powerful swimmer · **What happens:** be, struggle, reach · **To what, where:** powerful swimmer, shore

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (couple, powerful swimmer), 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:pg5615:3:65
# text = But he was a powerful swimmer, and struggled hard to reach the shore.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	powerful	powerful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	swimmer	swimmer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	struggled	struggle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	acl:relcl	_	_
10	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	xcomp	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	reach	reach	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	xcomp	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	shore	shore	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | couple | a powerful swimmer |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **struggle** | past | a powerful swimmer *not said here* |  |  |  |  | hard *property* | vn battle-36.4 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **reach** | to-infinitive | a powerful swimmer *not said here* | the shore |  |  |  |  | vn body\_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Agent shore=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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