---
title: They spent most of their time in dancing, unless when the sidelong b… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: They spent most of their time in dancing, unless when the sidelong breeze made the deck slope too much. Who acts: youths, sidelong breeze. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Minotaur., part 4, sentence 84

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They spent most of their time in dancing, unless when the sidelong breeze made the deck slope too much.

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**Who acts:** youths, sidelong breeze · **What happens:** spend, make · **To what, where:** most, dancing, deck slope

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., 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 (youths, sidelong breeze), 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:pg976:6:84
# text = They spent most of their time in dancing, unless when the sidelong breeze made the deck slope too much.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	spent	spend	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	most	most	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	2	obj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
7	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	dancing	dancing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
10	unless	unless	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
11	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	15	mark	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	sidelong	sidelong	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	breeze	breeze	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
15	made	make	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
17	deck	deck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	compound	_	_
18	slope	slope	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	_
19	too	too	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	much	much	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **spend** | past | youths *= youth* | most of youths's time |  | dancing |  |  | vn consume-66-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent most=Asset |
| 2 | **make** *a condition, not said to happen* | past | the sidelong breeze | the deck slope |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset slope=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:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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