---
title: The mussel shell grew bigger and bigger, and turned into a pretty li… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The mussel shell grew bigger and bigger, and turned into a pretty little boat, which would have held a dozen children. Who acts: mussel shell. 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 61

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The mussel shell grew bigger and bigger, and turned into a pretty little boat, which would have held a dozen children.

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**Who acts:** mussel shell · **What happens:** grow, turn, hold · **To what, where:** pretty little boat

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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 (mussel shell), 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:pg641:2:61
# text = The mussel shell grew bigger and bigger, and turned into a pretty little boat, which would have held a dozen children.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	mussel	mussel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
3	shell	shell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	grew	grow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	bigger	big	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	4	xcomp	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	bigger	big	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	turned	turn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
11	into	into	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
13	pretty	pretty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
14	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	boat	boat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
17	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	20	nsubj:pass	_	_
18	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
19	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	aux	_	_
20	held	hold	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	15	acl:relcl	_	_
21	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	dozen	dozen	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	23	nummod	_	_
23	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **grow** | past | the mussel shell |  |  |  |  | big *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **turn** | past | the mussel shell *not said here* |  |  | a pretty little boat |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V PP.trajectory»: agent=Theme into boat=Trajectory |
| 3 | **hold** | would · perfect · passive |  | a pretty little boat |  |  |  |  | vn conjecture-29.5 «NP V NP to be NP»: subject=Theme child=Eventuality |

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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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