---
title: Suddenly, when they had almost reached the top, a slave who was on i… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Suddenly, when they had almost reached the top, a slave who was on in front cried: Who acts: footprints. 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 193

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Suddenly, when they had almost reached the top, a slave who was on in front cried:

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**Who acts:** footprints · **What happens:** reach, cry · **To what, where:** top, front

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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 (footprints), 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:pg641:29:193
# text = Suddenly, when they had almost reached the top, a slave who was on in front cried:
1	Suddenly	suddenly	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	7	mark	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
5	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	almost	almost	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	reached	reach	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	18	advcl	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	top	top	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	slave	slave	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	conj	_	_
13	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	15	nsubj	_	_
14	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
15	on	on	ADP	RP	_	9	compound:prt	_	_
16	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	front	front	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	_
18	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	18	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reach** | past · perfect | footprints *= footprint* | the top and a slave |  |  |  | almost, suddenly *property* | vn body\_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | past |  |  |  | front |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in front=Location |

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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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