---
title: "But how was it that the fox was given all the poor little hens?" — Grimm's Fairy Stories · tree and pragmatics
description: "But how was it that the fox was given all the poor little hens?" A sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Travels of Tom Thumb, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimm's Fairy Stories, The Travels of Tom Thumb, sentence 75

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"But how was it that the fox was given all the poor little hens?"

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**What happens:** give · **To what, where:** fox

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This is a sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Travels of Tom Thumb. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg11027:22:75
# text = "But how was it that the fox was given all the poor little hens?"
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
3	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	4	advmod	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux:pass	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	_
6	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	fox	fox	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj:pass	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux:pass	_	_
10	given	give	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
11	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	15	det:predet	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
13	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
14	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	hens	hen	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give** *in a quote* | past · passive |  | the fox |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: subject=Recipient hen=Theme |

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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:** «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 11027 (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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