---
title: The boat whirled three, four times round, and became filled to the b… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The boat whirled three, four times round, and became filled to the brim with water: it began to sink! Who acts: boat. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/50/57/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Steadfast Tin-soldier, sentence 57

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The boat whirled three, four times round, and became filled to the brim with water: it began to sink!

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**Who acts:** boat · **What happens:** whirl, become, fill, begin, sink

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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 (boat), 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:pg640:50:57
# text = The boat whirled three, four times round, and became filled to the brim with water: it began to sink!
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	boat	boat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	whirled	whirl	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	7	nummod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	four	four	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	4	conj	_	_
7	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl:unmarked	_	_
8	round	round	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	became	become	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
12	filled	fill	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	xcomp	_	_
13	to	to	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	brim	brim	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
16	with	with	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	20	punct	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
20	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
21	to	to	PART	TO	_	22	mark	_	_
22	sink	sink	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **whirl** | past | the boat |  |  |  | time | round *property* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **become** | past | the boat *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **fill** | participle | the boat *not said here* |  |  |  |  | to the brim with water | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
| 4 | **begin** | past | boat |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 5 | **sink** | to-infinitive | boat *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |

<!-- .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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