---
title: Then the toys began to play at visiting, dancing, and fighting. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Then the toys began to play at visiting, dancing, and fighting. Who acts: toys. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Steadfast Tin-soldier, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Steadfast Tin-soldier, sentence 17

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Then the toys began to play at visiting, dancing, and fighting.

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**Who acts:** toys · **What happens:** begin, play · **To what, where:** visiting

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Steadfast Tin-soldier. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (toys), 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:pg640:50:17
# text = Then the toys began to play at visiting, dancing, and fighting.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	toys	toy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	play	play	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	at	at	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	visiting	visiting	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	dancing	dancing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	fighting	fighting	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past | the toys |  |  |  | then |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **play** | to-infinitive | the toys *not said here* |  |  | visiting and dancing |  |  | vn performance-26.7-1 «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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