---
title: They set to work in good earnest, and toiled so diligently, that, in… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: They set to work in good earnest, and toiled so diligently, that, in a very short time, a city began to make its appearance. Who acts: fellows, city. 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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# Tanglewood Tales, The Dragon's Teeth., part 4, sentence 73

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They set to work in good earnest, and toiled so diligently, that, in a very short time, a city began to make its appearance.

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**Who acts:** fellows, city · **What happens:** set, work, toil, begin, make · **To what, where:** appearance

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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 (fellows, city), 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:pg976:1037`): 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:pg976:13:73
# text = They set to work in good earnest, and toiled so diligently, that, in a very short time, a city began to make its appearance.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	set	set	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	work	work	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	earnest	earnest	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	toiled	toil	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
11	so	so	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	diligently	diligently	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
14	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	24	mark	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
16	in	in	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
18	very	very	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
19	short	short	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	obl	_	_
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
22	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	city	city	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	nsubj	_	_
24	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	_
25	to	to	PART	TO	_	26	mark	_	_
26	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	24	xcomp	_	_
27	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	28	nmod:poss	_	_
28	appearance	appearance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	obj	_	_
29	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **set** | past | fellows *= fellow* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **work** | to-infinitive | fellows *= fellow* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | in good earnest | vn employment-95.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent in earnest=Theme |
| 3 | **toil** | past | fellows *= fellow* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | diligently *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **begin** | past | a city |  |  |  | time |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 5 | **make** | to-infinitive | a city *not said here* | city's appearance |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset appearance=Product |

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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:** 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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