---
title: They loaded their carriages with bales of the finest linen they coul… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They loaded their carriages with bales of the finest linen they could find and then returned home. Who acts: brothers. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Biter Bit, part 4, sentence 77

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They loaded their carriages with bales of the finest linen they could find and then returned home.

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**Who acts:** brothers · **What happens:** load, find, return · **To what, where:** carriages, finest linen

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (brothers), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg7277:2358`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg7277:29:77
# text = They loaded their carriages with bales of the finest linen they could find and then returned home.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	loaded	load	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	carriages	carriage	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
5	with	with	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	bales	bale	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	finest	fine	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	10	amod	_	_
10	linen	linen	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	acl:relcl	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
15	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	16	advmod	_	_
16	returned	return	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
17	home	home	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **load** | past | brothers *= brother* | brothers's carriages |  |  |  | with bales of the finest linen | vn spray-9.7-2 «NP V NP.destination PP.theme»: agent=Agent carriage=Destination with bale=Theme |
| 2 | **find** | could | brothers *= brother* | the finest linen *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent linen=Topic |
| 3 | **return** | past | brothers *= brother* *not said here* |  |  |  | then | home *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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