---
title: At nightfall the king came home, and it was told him that Silver-tre… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: At nightfall the king came home, and it was told him that Silver-tree, his wife, was very ill. Who acts: king, Silver tree. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Gold-tree and Silver-tree, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, Gold-tree and Silver-tree, sentence 9

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At nightfall the king came home, and it was told him that Silver-tree, his wife, was very ill.

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**Who acts:** king, Silver tree · **What happens:** come, tell, be · **To what, where:** nightfall, king · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg7885:833`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg7885:15:9
# text = At nightfall the king came home, and it was told him that Silver-tree, his wife, was very ill.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	nightfall	nightfall	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	home	home	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	expl	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux:pass	_	_
11	told	tell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	conj	_	_
12	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	iobj	_	_
13	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	23	mark	_	_
14	Silver	Silver	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	compound	_	_
15	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	14	punct	_	_
16	tree	tree	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	23	nsubj	_	_
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
18	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	19	nmod:poss	_	_
19	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	appos	_	_
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
21	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	23	cop	_	_
22	very	very	ADV	RB	_	23	advmod	_	_
23	ill	ill	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	csubj:pass	_	_
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | the king |  |  | nightfall |  | home *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme at nightfall=Location |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past · passive | the king *not said here* | nightfall | king |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: he=Recipient |
| 3 | **is** | past | Silver tree |  |  |  |  | ill *property* | tree rules |

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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:** «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7885 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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