---
title: Their breath scorched the herbage before them. — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Their breath scorched the herbage before them. Who acts: breath. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Golden Fleece., part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Golden Fleece., part 4, sentence 80

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Their breath scorched the herbage before them.

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**Who acts:** breath · **What happens:** scorch · **To what, where:** herbage

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Golden Fleece., 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 (breath), 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:pg976:28:80
# text = Their breath scorched the herbage before them.
1	Their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	breath	breath	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	scorched	scorch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	herbage	herbage	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	before	before	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **scorch** | past | creatures's breath | the herbage |  |  | before creatures *= creature* |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent herbage=Patient |

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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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