---
title: But on the wedding-day it happened that a stranger came to the town… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But on the wedding-day it happened that a stranger came to the town with three black dogs. Who acts: it, stranger. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Dogs, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Three Dogs, sentence 43

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But on the wedding-day it happened that a stranger came to the town with three black dogs.

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**Who acts:** it, stranger · **What happens:** happen, come · **To what, where:** town

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Dogs. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (it, stranger), 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:pg7277:56:43
# text = But on the wedding-day it happened that a stranger came to the town with three black dogs.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
2	on	on	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	wedding	wedding	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	happened	happen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	stranger	stranger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	advcl	_	_
13	to	to	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	town	town	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
16	with	with	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
17	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	19	nummod	_	_
18	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	dogs	dog	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **happen** | past | it |  |  |  | day |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **come** | past | a stranger |  |  | the town |  | with three black dogs | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to town=Initial\_Location |

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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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