---
title: They drew it to land and opened it, and there was a little child! — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They drew it to land and opened it, and there was a little child! Who acts: monks, little child. 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 41

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They drew it to land and opened it, and there was a little child!

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**Who acts:** monks, little child · **What happens:** draw, land, open, be · **To what, where:** barrel

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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 (monks, little child), 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:pg641:4:41
# text = They drew it to land and opened it, and there was a little child!
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	drew	draw	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	land	land	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	opened	open	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	12	expl	_	_
12	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **draw** | past | monks *= monk* | barrel |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **land** | to-infinitive | monks *= monk* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn pocket-9.10-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **open** | past | monks *= monk* *not said here* | barrel |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location it=Theme |
| 4 | **be** | past | a little child |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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