---
title: It was during one of these attacks of sadness that a jelly-fish happ… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It was during one of these attacks of sadness that a jelly-fish happened to swim by. Who acts: fit, attacks. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Monkey and the Jelly-fish, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Monkey and the Jelly-fish, sentence 23

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It was during one of these attacks of sadness that a jelly-fish happened to swim by.

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**Who acts:** fit, attacks · **What happens:** be, happen, swim, attack · **To what, where:** sadness

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Monkey and the Jelly-fish. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fit, attacks), 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:pg641:32:23
# text = It was during one of these attacks of sadness that a jelly-fish happened to swim by.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	during	during	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	0	root	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	these	this	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	7	det	_	_
7	attacks	attack	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nmod	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	sadness	sadness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	_
10	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	15	nsubj	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
12	jelly	jelly	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
15	happened	happen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	acl:relcl	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	swim	swim	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	xcomp	_	_
18	by	by	ADP	IN	_	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | fit |  |  |  | during one | of this attacks of sadness | tree rules |
| 2 | **happen** | past | this attacks of sadness |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **swim** | to-infinitive | this attacks of sadness *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **attack** |  |  | sadness |  |  |  |  | nom attack «act transitive»: of=patient |

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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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