---
title: A few paces nearer, and man and horse would have been swallowed up b… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: A few paces nearer, and man and horse would have been swallowed up by them! Who acts: paces. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Dragon of the North(2), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Dragon of the North(2), sentence 159

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A few paces nearer, and man and horse would have been swallowed up by them!

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**Who acts:** paces · **What happens:** swallow up · **To what, where:** man

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Dragon of the North(2). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (paces), 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:pg640:5:159
# text = A few paces nearer, and man and horse would have been swallowed up by them!
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	paces	pace	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl:unmarked	_	_
4	nearer	near	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	13	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
7	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	conj	_	_
10	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
11	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	aux	_	_
12	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	13	aux:pass	_	_
13	swallowed	swallow	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
14	up	up	ADP	RP	_	13	compound:prt	_	_
15	by	by	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **swallow up** | would · perfect · passive | paces *= pace* | man and horse |  |  |  | near *property* | vn gobble-39.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent subject=Patient |

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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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