---
title: It was a fertile and lovely plain, with great trees flinging their s… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: It was a fertile and lovely plain, with great trees flinging their sun-speckled shadows over it, and hills fencing it in from the rough weather. Who acts: cud, great trees, hills, trees. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Dragon's Teeth., part 3, with its dependency tree an
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Dragon's Teeth., part 3, sentence 103

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It was a fertile and lovely plain, with great trees flinging their sun-speckled shadows over it, and hills fencing it in from the rough weather.

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**Who acts:** cud, great trees, hills, trees · **What happens:** be, fling, speckle, fence in, shadow · **To what, where:** speckled shadows, cud, rough weather

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Dragon's Teeth., part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cud, great trees, hills, trees), 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:pg976:12:103
# text = It was a fertile and lovely plain, with great trees flinging their sun-speckled shadows over it, and hills fencing it in from the rough weather.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
4	fertile	fertile	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	lovely	lovely	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
7	plain	plain	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	with	with	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	trees	tree	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	_
12	flinging	fling	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	11	acl	_	_
13	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
14	sun	sun	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	speckled	speckle	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	17	amod	_	_
17	shadows	shadow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obj	_	_
18	over	over	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	_
21	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
22	hills	hill	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	23	nsubj	_	_
23	fencing	fence	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	7	advcl	_	_
24	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	23	obj	_	_
25	in	in	ADP	RP	_	23	compound:prt	_	_
26	from	from	ADP	IN	_	29	case	_	_
27	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	29	det	_	_
28	rough	rough	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	29	amod	_	_
29	weather	weather	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
30	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | cud |  |  |  |  | with great trees; plain *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **fling** | gerund | great trees *not said here* | trees's speckled shadows |  | cud |  |  | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP PP.destinations»: agent=Agent shadow=Theme over it=Destination |
| 3 | **speckle** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn fill-9.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **fence in** | gerund | hills | cud |  | the rough weather |  |  | vn butter-9.9 «NP V NP.destination»: agent=Agent it=Destination |
| 5 | **shadow** |  | trees *= tree* |  |  |  |  |  | nom shadow «state transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .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.

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**Text:** «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Project Gutenberg book 976 (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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