---
title: Then they thought themselves nightingales. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Then they thought themselves nightingales. Who acts: ladies. 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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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Nightingale, sentence 92

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Then they thought themselves nightingales.

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**Who acts:** ladies · **What happens:** think · **To what, where:** ladies

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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 (ladies), 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:pg640:48:92
# text = Then they thought themselves nightingales.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	3	obj	_	_
5	nightingales	nightingale	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **think** *speech: other* | past | ladies *= lady* | ladies *= lady* |  |  | then |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V NP ADJ»: agent=Agent themselves=Theme nightingale=Attribute |

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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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