---
title: It flickered, and struggled with the duskiness, but could not half l… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: It flickered, and struggled with the duskiness, but could not half light up the gloomy cavern with all its melancholy glimmer. Who acts: torch. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 3, sentence 4

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It flickered, and struggled with the duskiness, but could not half light up the gloomy cavern with all its melancholy glimmer.

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**Who acts:** torch · **What happens:** flicker, struggle, not light up, glimmer · **To what, where:** gloomy cavern

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pomegranate Seeds., 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 (torch), 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:pg976:22:4
# text = It flickered, and struggled with the duskiness, but could not half light up the gloomy cavern with all its melancholy glimmer.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	flickered	flicker	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	struggled	struggle	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	conj	_	_
6	with	with	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	duskiness	duskiness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
11	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
12	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
13	half	half	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	aux:pass	_	_
14	light	light	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	parataxis	_	_
15	up	up	ADP	RP	_	14	compound:prt	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
17	gloomy	gloomy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	cavern	cavern	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	_
19	with	with	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
20	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	23	det:predet	_	_
21	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	23	nmod:poss	_	_
22	melancholy	melancholy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	compound	_	_
23	glimmer	glimmer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **flicker** | past | torch |  |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **struggle** | participle | torch *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with the duskiness | vn battle-36.4 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent with duskiness=Co-Agent |
| 3 | **not** **light up** | could · passive |  | the gloomy cavern |  |  |  | with torch's melancholy glimmer | vn preparing-26.3-1 «NP V NP»: cavern=Product with glimmer=Material |
| 4 | **glimmer** |  | torch |  |  |  |  |  | nom glimmer «event intransitive»: poss=agent |

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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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