---
title: When they were on the way there they heard a cow mooing. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: When they were on the way there they heard a cow mooing. Who acts: tears, cow. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nightingale, 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/pg640/48/49/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Nightingale, sentence 49

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When they were on the way there they heard a cow mooing.

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**Who acts:** tears, cow · **What happens:** be, hear, moo · **To what, where:** way, cow

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nightingale. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tears, cow), 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:pg640:48:49
# text = When they were on the way there they heard a cow mooing.
1	When	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	on	on	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl:unmarked	_	_
7	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	6	advmod	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	cow	cow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	mooing	moo	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	11	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | tears *= tear* |  |  | the way; there |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **hear** | past | tears *= tear* | a cow |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer cow=Stimulus |
| 3 | **moo** | gerund | a cow *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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 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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