---
title: They soon came to a village where a fair was being held. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They soon came to a village where a fair was being held. Who acts: captives. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Swan, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/23/37/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Magic Swan, sentence 37

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They soon came to a village where a fair was being held.

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**Who acts:** captives · **What happens:** come, hold · **To what, where:** village, fair

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Swan. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (captives), 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:pg7277:23:37
# text = They soon came to a village where a fair was being held.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	3	advmod	_	_
3	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	village	village	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	12	advmod	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	fair	fair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj:pass	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux:pass	_	_
11	being	be	AUX	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	12	aux:pass	_	_
12	held	hold	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | captives *= captive* |  |  | a village |  | soon *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to village=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **hold** | past · passive |  | a fair |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: subject=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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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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