---
title: Towards dawn they fell asleep, and the bird ate the dates on the tree. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Towards dawn they fell asleep, and the bird ate the dates on the tree. Who acts: Towards dawn, bird. 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 71

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Towards dawn they fell asleep, and the bird ate the dates on the tree.

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**Who acts:** Towards dawn, bird · **What happens:** fall, eat · **To what, where:** dates, 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 (Towards dawn, bird), 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:pg641:29:71
# text = Towards dawn they fell asleep, and the bird ate the dates on the tree.
1	Towards	toward	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	compound	_	_
2	dawn	dawn	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	fell	fall	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	asleep	asleep	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	ate	eat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	dates	date	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	_
13	on	on	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fall** | past | Towards dawn |  |  |  |  | asleep *property* | vn occur-48.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **eat** | past | the bird | the dates |  | the tree |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent date=Patient |

<!-- .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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