---
title: The snowflakes grew larger and larger till they looked like great wh… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The snowflakes grew larger and larger till they looked like great white birds. Who acts: snowflakes. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 8, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 8, sentence 110

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The snowflakes grew larger and larger till they looked like great white birds.

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**Who acts:** snowflakes · **What happens:** grow, look

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (snowflakes), 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:pg5615:8:110
# text = The snowflakes grew larger and larger till they looked like great white birds.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	snowflakes	snowflake	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	grew	grow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	larger	large	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	3	xcomp	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	larger	large	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	4	conj	_	_
7	till	till	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	advcl	_	_
10	like	like	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
11	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
12	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	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 | **grow** | past | the snowflakes |  |  |  |  | large *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **look** | past | snowflakes *= snowflake* |  |  |  |  | like great white birds | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |

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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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