---
title: A travelling circus was giving a performance, and the clown was just… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: A travelling circus was giving a performance, and the clown was just doing his tricks. Who acts: travelling circus, clown. 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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# The Green Fairy Book, The Magic Swan, sentence 38

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A travelling circus was giving a performance, and the clown was just doing his tricks.

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**Who acts:** travelling circus, clown · **What happens:** travel, give, do, trick · **To what, where:** performance, tricks

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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 (travelling circus, clown), 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:pg7277:23:38
# text = A travelling circus was giving a performance, and the clown was just doing his tricks.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	travelling	travel	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	3	amod	_	_
3	circus	circus	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	giving	give	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	performance	performance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	clown	clown	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
12	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
13	just	just	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
14	doing	do	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	conj	_	_
15	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	tricks	trick	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **travel** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **give** | past · progressive | a travelling circus | a performance |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent performance=Theme |
| 3 | **do** | past · progressive | the clown | clown's tricks |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent trick=Eventuality |
| 4 | **trick** |  | clown |  |  |  |  |  | nom trick «act transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .note -->
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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