---
title: When he came to the sea, the water was a dark-grey colour, and it wa… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: When he came to the sea, the water was a dark-grey colour, and it was heaving against the shore. Who acts: king, water. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife, sentence 88

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When he came to the sea, the water was a dark-grey colour, and it was heaving against the shore.

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**Who acts:** king, water · **What happens:** come, be, heave · **To what, where:** sea, grey colour

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (king, water), 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:pg7277:3536`): 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:pg7277:54:88
# text = When he came to the sea, the water was a dark-grey colour, and it was heaving against the shore.
1	When	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	advcl	_	_
4	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
12	dark	dark	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
13	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	12	punct	_	_
14	grey	grey	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	colour	colour	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
18	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
19	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
20	heaving	heave	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	15	conj	_	_
21	against	against	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
22	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	shore	shore	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obl	_	_
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | king |  |  | the sea |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to sea=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **is a** | past | the water | a grey colour |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **heave** | past · progressive | water |  |  |  |  | against the shore | vn push-12 «NP V NP»: agent=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:** 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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