---
title: When they had touched them the swan-skins fell off, and her brothers… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: When they had touched them the swan-skins fell off, and her brothers stood before her living, well and beautiful. Who acts: swans, swan skins, brothers, sleeve. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Six Swans, 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/pg640/4/82/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Six Swans, sentence 82

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When they had touched them the swan-skins fell off, and her brothers stood before her living, well and beautiful.

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**Who acts:** swans, swan skins, brothers, sleeve · **What happens:** touch, fall off, stand, live · **To what, where:** shirts, living

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Six Swans. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (swans, swan skins, brothers, sleeve), 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:pg640:4:82
# text = When they had touched them the swan-skins fell off, and her brothers stood before her living, well and beautiful.
1	When	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	4	advmod	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	touched	touch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	10	advcl	_	_
5	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
7	swan	swan	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	skins	skin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
10	fell	fall	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	off	off	ADP	RP	_	10	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
14	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	brothers	brother	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	_
16	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	conj	_	_
17	before	before	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	19	nmod:poss	_	_
19	living	living	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
21	well	well	INTJ	UH	_	16	discourse	_	_
22	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
23	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **touch** | past · perfect | swans *= swan* | shirts *= shirt* |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme they=Co-Theme |
| 2 | **fall off** | past | the swan skins |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1-1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 3 | **stand** | past | sleeve's brothers |  |  | sleeve's living |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent before living=Location |
| 4 | **live** |  | sleeve |  |  |  |  |  | nom living «cognition intransitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .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.

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**Text:** «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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