---
title: He felt as though he were sinking into a snow-drift. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He felt as though he were sinking into a snow-drift. Who acts: masterpiece. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/8/118/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Pink Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/) / [The Pink Fairy Book, part 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/8/) / 118

# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 8, sentence 118

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He felt as though he were sinking into a snow-drift.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** masterpiece · **What happens:** feel, sink · **To what, where:** snow drift

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (masterpiece), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg5615:8:118
# text = He felt as though he were sinking into a snow-drift.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	felt	feel	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	as	as	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
4	though	though	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	sinking	sink	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	advcl	_	_
8	into	into	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
10	snow	snow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	drift	drift	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **feel** | past | masterpiece |  |  |  |  |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **sink** | past · progressive | masterpiece |  |  | a snow drift |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 117](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/8/117/)
- next →: [sentence 119](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/8/119/)
- ↑ back to [The Pink Fairy Book, part 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/8/)