---
title: Then the sword fell rattling on the ground, for the gazelle had fain… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Then the sword fell rattling on the ground, for the gazelle had fainted. Who acts: sword. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of a Gazelle, 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/pg641/15/154/)

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Story of a Gazelle, sentence 154

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Then the sword fell rattling on the ground, for the gazelle had fainted.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** sword · **What happens:** fall, rattle, faint · **To what, where:** ground, gazelle

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of a Gazelle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sword), 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:pg641:15:154
# text = Then the sword fell rattling on the ground, for the gazelle had fainted.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	sword	sword	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	fell	fall	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	rattling	rattle	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	xcomp	_	_
6	on	on	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	gazelle	gazelle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj:pass	_	_
13	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	fainted	faint	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fall** | past | the sword |  |  |  | then |  | vn long-32.2 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **rattle** | gerund | the sword *not said here* |  |  | the ground |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on ground=Location |
| 3 | **faint** | past · perfect · passive |  | the gazelle |  |  |  |  | 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.

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**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.

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