---
title: They moved down slowly to stately music till they came past the tree… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: They moved down slowly to stately music till they came past the trees on which the birds were settling. Who acts: friends, birds. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Earl Mar's Daughter, 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/pg7439/35/42/)

<!-- 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/) / [Earl Mar's Daughter](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/35/) / 42

# English Fairy Tales, Earl Mar's Daughter, sentence 42

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They moved down slowly to stately music till they came past the trees on which the birds were settling.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** friends, birds · **What happens:** move down, come, settle · **To what, where:** music, trees

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Earl Mar's Daughter. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (friends, birds), 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:pg7439:35:42
# text = They moved down slowly to stately music till they came past the trees on which the birds were settling.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	moved	move	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	down	down	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
4	slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	stately	stately	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	music	music	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
8	till	till	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
11	past	past	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	trees	tree	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	_
14	on	on	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	19	obl	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	nsubj	_	_
18	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	19	aux	_	_
19	settling	settle	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	13	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **move down** | past | friends *= friend* |  |  | music |  | down, slowly *property* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V PP.trajectory»: agent=Theme to music=Trajectory |
| 2 | **come** | past | friends *= friend* |  |  | the trees |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme past tree=Initial\_Location |
| 3 | **settle** | past · progressive | the birds |  |  |  |  | on the trees | vn correspond-36.1 «NP V PP.theme S»: agent=Agent on which=Topic |

<!-- .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: [sentence 41](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/35/41/)
- next →: [sentence 43](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/35/43/)
- ↑ back to [Earl Mar's Daughter](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/35/)