---
title: The shirt-collar was rather frayed out at the edge, so the scissors… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The shirt-collar was rather frayed out at the edge, so the scissors came to cut off the threads. Who acts: scissors. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 6, 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/pg5615/6/25/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 6, sentence 25

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The shirt-collar was rather frayed out at the edge, so the scissors came to cut off the threads.

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**Who acts:** scissors · **What happens:** fray out, come, cut off · **To what, where:** shirt collar, edge, threads

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (scissors), 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:pg5615:6:25
# text = The shirt-collar was rather frayed out at the edge, so the scissors came to cut off the threads.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
2	shirt	shirt	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	collar	collar	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj:pass	_	_
5	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux:pass	_	_
6	rather	rather	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	frayed	fray	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
8	out	out	ADP	RP	_	7	compound:prt	_	_
9	at	at	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	edge	edge	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
13	so	so	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	scissors	scissors	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	_
16	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
17	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	mark	_	_
18	cut	cut	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	xcomp	_	_
19	off	off	ADP	RP	_	18	compound:prt	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	threads	thread	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fray out** | past · passive |  | the shirt collar |  | the edge |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: subject=Patient |
| 2 | **come** | past | the scissors |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **cut off** | to-infinitive | the scissors *not said here* | the threads |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Affector thread=Eventuality |

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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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