---
title: There's something white--a merry maid or a milk-white swan--coming d… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: There's something white--a merry maid or a milk-white swan--coming down the stream.” Who acts: something. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack Hannaford, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Jack Hannaford, sentence 66

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There's something white--a merry maid or a milk-white swan--coming down the stream.”

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**Who acts:** something · **What happens:** be, come down · **To what, where:** stream

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack Hannaford. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (something), 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:pg7439:13:66
# text = There's something white--a merry maid or a milk-white swan--coming down the stream.”
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	's	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	2	nsubj	_	_
4	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	merry	merry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	maid	maid	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	appos	_	_
9	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
11	milk	milk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	swan	swan	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	coming	come	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	advcl	_	_
17	down	down	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	stream	stream	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | present | something |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **come down** | gerund | something *not said here* | the stream |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location stream=Theme |

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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:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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