---
title: They die rather than fly from the field of battle!" — Stories of Charlemagne and the twelve Peers of F… · tree and pragmatics
description: They die rather than fly from the field of battle!" Who acts: villains. A sentence of «Stories of Charlemagne and the twelve Peers of France» by Alfred John Church, How Oliver Was Slain, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Stories of Charlemagne and the twelve Peers of France, How Oliver Was Slain, sentence 21

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They die rather than fly from the field of battle!"

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**Who acts:** villains · **What happens:** die, fly · **To what, where:** field

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This is a sentence of «Stories of Charlemagne and the twelve Peers of France» by Alfred John Church, How Oliver Was Slain. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (villains), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg75339:33:21
# text = They die rather than fly from the field of battle!"
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	die	die	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	rather	rather	ADV	RB	ExtPos=CCONJ	5	cc	_	_
4	than	than	ADP	IN	_	3	fixed	_	_
5	fly	fly	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
6	from	from	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	field	field	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	battle	battle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **die** | present | villains *= villain* |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 2 | **fly** | infinitive | villains *= villain* *not said here* |  |  | the field of battle |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme from field=Trajectory |

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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:** «Stories of Charlemagne and the twelve Peers of France» by Alfred John Church, Project Gutenberg book 75339 (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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