---
title: When they touched the shore the dog repeated his question. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: When they touched the shore the dog repeated his question. Who acts: animals, dog. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Watch, 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/pg7277/8/82/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Enchanted Watch, sentence 82

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When they touched the shore the dog repeated his question.

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**Who acts:** animals, dog · **What happens:** touch, repeat, question · **To what, where:** shore, question

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Watch. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (animals, dog), 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:pg7277:8:82
# text = When they touched the shore the dog repeated his question.
1	When	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	touched	touch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	advcl	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	shore	shore	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
8	repeated	repeat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	question	question	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **touch** | past | animals *= animal* | the shore |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme shore=Co-Theme |
| 2 | **repeat** | past | the dog | dog's question |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent question=Eventuality |
| 3 | **question** |  | dog |  |  |  |  |  | nom question «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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