---
title: ‘Those are twelve murderers who ate the raven and died of it.’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Those are twelve murderers who ate the raven and died of it.’ Who acts: twelve murderers. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Riddle, 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/pg7277/47/46/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Riddle, sentence 46

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‘Those are twelve murderers who ate the raven and died of it.’

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**Who acts:** twelve murderers · **What happens:** be, eat, die · **To what, where:** twelve murderers, raven

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Riddle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (twelve murderers), 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:pg7277:47:46
# text = ‘Those are twelve murderers who ate the raven and died of it.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Those	that	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	5	det	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	twelve	twelve	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	5	nummod	_	_
5	murderers	murderer	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
6	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	7	nsubj	_	_
7	ate	eat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	raven	raven	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	died	die	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | that twelve murderers |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **eat** | past | that twelve murderers | the raven |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent raven=Patient |
| 3 | **die** | past | that twelve murderers *not said here* |  |  |  |  | of raven | vn die-42.4-1 «NP V PP.cause»: agent=Patient of it=Causer |

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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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