---
title: Childe Rowland and his brothers twain Were playing at the ball, And… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Childe Rowland and his brothers twain Were playing at the ball, And there was their sister Burd Ellen In the midst, among them all. Who acts: Childe twain. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Childe Rowland, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/24/1/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [English Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/) / [Childe Rowland](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/24/) / 1

# English Fairy Tales, Childe Rowland, sentence 1

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Childe Rowland and his brothers twain Were playing at the ball, And there was their sister Burd Ellen In the midst, among them all.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Childe twain · **What happens:** play, be · **To what, where:** ball

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Childe Rowland. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Childe twain), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg7439:24:1
# text = Childe Rowland and his brothers twain Were playing at the ball, And there was their sister Burd Ellen In the midst, among them all.
1	Childe	Childe	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	_
2	Rowland	Rowland	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	1	flat	_	_
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	brothers	brother	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	conj	_	_
6	twain	twain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
7	Were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	playing	play	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
9	at	at	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	ball	ball	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	15	expl	_	_
15	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	25	cop	_	_
16	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	sister	sister	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
18	Burd	Burd	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	17	appos	_	_
19	Ellen	Ellen	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	18	flat	_	_
20	In	in	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	midst	midst	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	25	punct	_	_
24	among	among	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
25	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obl	_	_
26	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	25	nmod:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **play** | past · progressive | Childe twain |  |  | the ball |  |  | vn performance-26.7-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | among brothers *= brother*; all *nmod:unmarked* | tree rules |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Jack the Giant-killer, 180](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/23/180/)
- next →: [sentence 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/24/2/)
- ↑ back to [Childe Rowland](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/24/)