---
title: The moss grew over it thicker and thicker, until at last it looked a… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The moss grew over it thicker and thicker, until at last it looked almost like a soft green seat, with only a few gray knobs of granite peeping out. Who acts: moss, rock, granite. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmat
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Minotaur., part 1, sentence 31

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The moss grew over it thicker and thicker, until at last it looked almost like a soft green seat, with only a few gray knobs of granite peeping out.

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**Who acts:** moss, rock, granite · **What happens:** grow, look, peep out · **To what, where:** rock

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (moss, rock, granite), 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:pg976:3:31
# text = The moss grew over it thicker and thicker, until at last it looked almost like a soft green seat, with only a few gray knobs of granite peeping out.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	moss	moss	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	grew	grow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	over	over	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obl	_	_
6	thicker	thick	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	3	xcomp	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	thicker	thick	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	until	until	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	obl	_	_
13	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
15	almost	almost	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
16	like	like	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
18	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
19	green	green	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	seat	seat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
22	with	with	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
23	only	only	ADV	RB	_	27	advmod	_	_
24	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	27	det	_	_
25	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	amod	_	_
26	gray	gray	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	amod	_	_
27	knobs	knob	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	parataxis	_	_
28	of	of	ADP	IN	_	29	case	_	_
29	granite	granite	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	27	nmod	_	_
30	peeping	peep	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	29	acl	_	_
31	out	out	ADP	RP	_	30	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
32	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **grow** | past | the moss |  |  | rock |  | thick *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme over it=Location |
| 2 | **look** | past | rock |  |  |  |  | like a soft green seat; at last | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at last=Theme |
| 3 | **peep out** | gerund | granite *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=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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