---
title: But year by year passed, and he never got them. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But year by year passed, and he never got them. Who acts: year, sultan. 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 68

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But year by year passed, and he never got them.

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**Who acts:** year, sultan · **What happens:** pass, not get · **To what, where:** dates

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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 (year, sultan), 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:pg641:29:68
# text = But year by year passed, and he never got them.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	by	by	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
5	passed	pass	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
10	got	get	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
11	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pass** | past | year by year |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **get** | past | sultan | dates *= date* |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer they=Stimulus |

<!-- .note -->
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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