---
title: Not far off they saw a tuft of trees, which appeared as if there mig… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Not far off they saw a tuft of trees, which appeared as if there might be a spring of water beneath them. Who acts: companions, tuft. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Dragon's Teeth., part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/13/6/)

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Dragon's Teeth., part 4, sentence 6

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Not far off they saw a tuft of trees, which appeared as if there might be a spring of water beneath them.

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**Who acts:** companions, tuft · **What happens:** see, appear, be · **To what, where:** tuft

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Dragon's Teeth., part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (companions, tuft), 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:pg976:13:6
# text = Not far off they saw a tuft of trees, which appeared as if there might be a spring of water beneath them.
1	Not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	2	advmod	_	_
2	far	far	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	5	advmod	_	_
3	off	off	ADP	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	tuft	tuft	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	trees	tree	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	12	nsubj	_	_
12	appeared	appear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	acl:relcl	_	_
13	as	as	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
14	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
15	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	17	expl	_	_
16	might	might	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
17	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	19	cop	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	spring	spring	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
20	of	of	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nmod	_	_
22	beneath	beneath	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
23	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** | past | companions *= companion* | a tuft of trees |  |  |  | far *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer tuft=Stimulus |
| 2 | **appear** | past | a tuft of trees |  |  |  |  | beneath companions *= companion* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme beneath they=Location |
| 3 | **is** | infinitive |  |  |  |  | as a spring | of water | 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:** «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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