---
title: For many years Mark has been ferrying people across the river. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: For many years Mark has been ferrying people across the river. Who acts: Mark. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars, sentence 161

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For many years Mark has been ferrying people across the river.

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**Who acts:** Mark · **What happens:** ferry · **To what, where:** people, river

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Mark), 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:pg641:4:161
# text = For many years Mark has been ferrying people across the river.
1	For	for	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	_
4	Mark	Mark	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
5	has	have	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	7	aux	_	_
7	ferrying	ferry	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
8	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	_
9	across	across	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	river	river	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ferry** | present · perfect · progressive | Mark | people |  | the river | year |  | vn vehicle-51.4.1 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent people=Theme across river=Trajectory |

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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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