---
title: They passed through a long dark passage till at length a bright ray… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They passed through a long dark passage till at length a bright ray of light shone before them through the chinks of a half-ruined wall. Who acts: storks, bright ray. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Caliph Stork, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every 
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Story of Caliph Stork, sentence 154

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They passed through a long dark passage till at length a bright ray of light shone before them through the chinks of a half-ruined wall.

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**Who acts:** storks, bright ray · **What happens:** pass, shine, ruin, ray · **To what, where:** long dark passage, length, light

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Caliph Stork. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (storks, bright ray), 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:pg7277:484`): 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:pg7277:7:154
# text = They passed through a long dark passage till at length a bright ray of light shone before them through the chinks of a half-ruined wall.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	passed	pass	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	through	through	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
5	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
6	dark	dark	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	passage	passage	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
8	till	till	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
9	at	at	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	length	length	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	bright	bright	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	ray	ray	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	light	light	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	_
16	shone	shine	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
17	before	before	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obl	_	_
19	through	through	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	chinks	chink	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	obl	_	_
22	of	of	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
23	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	27	det	_	_
24	half	half	ADV	RB	_	26	advmod	_	_
25	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	24	punct	_	_
26	ruined	ruin	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	27	amod	_	_
27	wall	wall	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nmod	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pass** | past | storks *= stork* |  |  | a long dark passage |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme through passage=Location |
| 2 | **shine** | past | a bright ray of light |  |  | length | before storks *= stork* | through the chinks of a ruined wall | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme at length=Location |
| 3 | **ruin** | participle |  |  |  |  |  | half *property* | vn destroy-44 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **ray** |  |  | light |  |  |  |  | nom ray «phenomenon transitive»: of=patient |

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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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