---
title: At once her brothers and her friends drew their swords and cut Mr. F… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: At once her brothers and her friends drew their swords and cut Mr. Fox into a thousand pieces. Who acts: brothers. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Be Bold, Be Bold, But Not Too Bold., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Be Bold, Be Bold, But Not Too Bold., sentence 17

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At once her brothers and her friends drew their swords and cut Mr. Fox into a thousand pieces.

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**Who acts:** brothers · **What happens:** draw, cut · **To what, where:** swords, thousand pieces

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Be Bold, Be Bold, But Not Too Bold.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (brothers), 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:pg7439:33:17
# text = At once her brothers and her friends drew their swords and cut Mr. Fox into a thousand pieces.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	8	obl	_	_
3	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	brothers	brother	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
6	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	friends	friend	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	conj	_	_
8	drew	draw	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	swords	sword	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
12	cut	cut	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	14	amod	_	_
13	Mr.	Mr.	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	_
14	Fox	fox	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	conj	_	_
15	into	into	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	thousand	thousand	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	18	nummod	_	_
18	pieces	piece	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **draw** | past | Fox's brothers and Fox's friends | brothers's swords and cut Mr. Fox |  |  |  | into thousand pieces *result* | vn lure-59.3 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent sword=Patient into piece=Result |
| 2 | **cut** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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