---
title: At length his breath failed him, and he threw himself almost sensele… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: At length his breath failed him, and he threw himself almost senseless on the turf. Who acts: breath, noise. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Young Man Who Would Have His Eyes Opened, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Young Man Who Would Have His Eyes Opened, sentence 29

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At length his breath failed him, and he threw himself almost senseless on the turf.

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**Who acts:** breath, noise · **What happens:** fail, throw · **To what, where:** noise, length, turf

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Young Man Who Would Have His Eyes Opened. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (breath, noise), 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:pg641:34:29
# text = At length his breath failed him, and he threw himself almost senseless on the turf.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	length	length	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
3	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	breath	breath	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	failed	fail	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	threw	throw	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
11	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	10	obj	_	_
12	almost	almost	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	senseless	senseless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	xcomp	_	_
14	on	on	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	turf	turf	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fail** | past | noise's breath | noise |  | length |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Eventuality |
| 2 | **throw** | past | noise | noise |  | the turf |  | senseless *property* | vn throw-17.1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.destinations»: agent=Agent himself=Theme on turf=Destination |

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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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