---
title: But before she could decide, a little swallow flew up with the baske… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But before she could decide, a little swallow flew up with the basket in its beak, and the girl was happy again. Who acts: Dotterine, little swallow, girl. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Child Who Came From an Egg, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every claus
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/12/122/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Violet Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/) / [The Child Who Came From an Egg](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/12/) / 122

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Child Who Came From an Egg, sentence 122

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But before she could decide, a little swallow flew up with the basket in its beak, and the girl was happy again.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Dotterine, little swallow, girl · **What happens:** decide, fly up, be

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Child Who Came From an Egg. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Dotterine, little swallow, girl), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg641:12:122
# text = But before she could decide, a little swallow flew up with the basket in its beak, and the girl was happy again.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
2	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
3	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	decide	decide	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	swallow	swallow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	flew	fly	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	up	up	ADP	RP	_	10	compound:prt	_	_
12	with	with	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	basket	basket	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
15	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	beak	beak	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	nsubj	_	_
22	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	23	cop	_	_
23	happy	happy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	conj	_	_
24	again	again	ADV	RB	_	23	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **decide** | could | Dotterine |  |  |  |  |  | vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **fly up** | past | a little swallow |  |  |  |  | with the basket in basket's beak | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | past | the girl |  |  |  | again | happy *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 121](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/12/121/)
- next →: [sentence 123](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/12/123/)
- ↑ back to [The Child Who Came From an Egg](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/12/)