---
title: His screams brought the neighbours from their cottages, but they wer… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: His screams brought the neighbours from their cottages, but they were unable to explain how it had all come about. Who acts: screams, body, husband. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Tale of the Tontlawald, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, A Tale of the Tontlawald, sentence 161

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His screams brought the neighbours from their cottages, but they were unable to explain how it had all come about.

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**Who acts:** screams, body, husband · **What happens:** bring, be, explain, come about, scream · **To what, where:** neighbours, cottages · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Tale of the Tontlawald. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (screams, body, husband), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg641:162`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg641:2:161
# text = His screams brought the neighbours from their cottages, but they were unable to explain how it had all come about.
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	screams	scream	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	brought	bring	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	neighbours	neighbour	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
6	from	from	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	cottages	cottage	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
13	unable	unable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	explain	explain	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
16	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	20	advmod	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
18	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
19	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	20	advmod	_	_
20	come	come	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	15	ccomp	_	_
21	about	about	ADP	RP	_	20	compound:prt	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **bring** | past | husband's screams | the neighbours |  | screams's cottages |  |  | vn bring-11.3-1 «NP V NP PP.initial\_location»: agent=Agent neighbour=Theme from cottage=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **is** | past | screams *= scream* |  |  |  |  | unable *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **explain** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | screams *= scream* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **come about** | past · perfect | body |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **scream** |  | husband |  |  |  |  |  | nom scream «communication intransitive»: poss=agent |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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