---
title: He lay on the grass chewing tobacco, when the gazelle trotted up. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He lay on the grass chewing tobacco, when the gazelle trotted up. Who acts: man, gazelle. 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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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Story of a Gazelle, sentence 33

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He lay on the grass chewing tobacco, when the gazelle trotted up.

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**Who acts:** man, gazelle · **What happens:** lie, chew, trot up · **To what, where:** grass, tobacco

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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 (man, gazelle), 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:pg641:15:33
# text = He lay on the grass chewing tobacco, when the gazelle trotted up.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	lay	lie	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	on	on	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	grass	grass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
6	chewing	chew	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	advcl	_	_
7	tobacco	tobacco	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	12	advmod	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	gazelle	gazelle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	trotted	trot	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
13	up	up	ADP	RP	_	12	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lie** | past | man |  |  | the grass |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on grass=Location |
| 2 | **chew** | gerund | man *not said here* | tobacco |  |  |  |  | vn chew-39.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tobacco=Patient |
| 3 | **trot up** | past | the gazelle |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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 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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