---
title: One day two street-urchins were playing and wading in the gutter, pi… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: One day two street-urchins were playing and wading in the gutter, picking up old nails, pennies, and such things. Who acts: two street urchins. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Story About a Darning-needle, 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/pg640/51/68/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, A Story About a Darning-needle, sentence 68

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One day two street-urchins were playing and wading in the gutter, picking up old nails, pennies, and such things.

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**Who acts:** two street urchins · **What happens:** play, wade, pick up · **To what, where:** such things, gutter, old nails

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Story About a Darning-needle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (two street urchins), 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:pg640:51:68
# text = One day two street-urchins were playing and wading in the gutter, picking up old nails, pennies, and such things.
1	One	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	nummod	_	_
2	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	6	nummod	_	_
4	street	street	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	urchins	urchin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
7	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	playing	play	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	wading	wade	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	conj	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	gutter	gutter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
15	picking	pick	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	parataxis	_	_
16	up	up	ADP	RP	_	15	compound:prt	_	_
17	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	nails	nail	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
20	pennies	penny	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
22	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	24	cc	_	_
23	such	such	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	24	amod	_	_
24	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **play** | past · progressive | two street urchins | such things |  |  | day |  | vn performance-26.7-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **wade** | gerund | two street urchins *not said here* |  |  | the gutter |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in gutter=Trajectory |
| 3 | **pick up** | gerund |  | old nails and pennies |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nail=Topic |

<!-- .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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