---
title: Then they took the drum, and went to the tree where the boy lay slee… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Then they took the drum, and went to the tree where the boy lay sleeping. Who acts: people, boy. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Nunda, Eater of People, sentence 135

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Then they took the drum, and went to the tree where the boy lay sleeping.

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**Who acts:** people, boy · **What happens:** take, go, lay, sleep · **To what, where:** drum, tree

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (people, boy), 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:pg641:2586`): 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:pg641:29:135
# text = Then they took the drum, and went to the tree where the boy lay sleeping.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	took	take	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	drum	drum	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
9	to	to	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
12	where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	15	advmod	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
15	lay	lay	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	acl:relcl	_	_
16	sleeping	sleep	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	15	xcomp	_	_
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | people | the drum |  |  | then |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent drum=Theme |
| 2 | **go** | past | people *not said here* |  |  | the tree |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to tree=Initial\_Location |
| 3 | **lay** | past | the boy |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **sleep** | gerund | the boy *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn snooze-40.4-1 «NP V»: agent=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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