---
title: And so the girls told her they had first smeared their heads with pi… — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And so the girls told her they had first smeared their heads with pitch and then laid hot stones upon them. Who acts: girls, sisters. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 26, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/26/133/)

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 26, sentence 133

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And so the girls told her they had first smeared their heads with pitch and then laid hot stones upon them.

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**Who acts:** girls, sisters · **What happens:** tell, smear, lay · **To what, where:** witch, heads, hot stones · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 26. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (girls, sisters), 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:pg3027:26:133
# text = And so the girls told her they had first smeared their heads with pitch and then laid hot stones upon them.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	so	so	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	girls	girl	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
5	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	iobj	_	_
7	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
8	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
9	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	10	advmod	_	_
10	smeared	smear	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	5	ccomp	_	_
11	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	pitch	pitch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
16	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	17	advmod	_	_
17	laid	lay	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	conj	_	_
18	hot	hot	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	stones	stone	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	obj	_	_
20	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | the girls |  | witch |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent she=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **smear** | past · perfect | sisters *= sister* | sisters's heads |  |  |  | with pitch; first *property* | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP.destination PP.theme»: agent=Agent head=Destination with pitch=Theme |
| 3 | **lay** | past | sisters *= sister* *not said here* | hot stones |  |  | then | upon sisters *= sister* | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent stone=Theme upon they=Destination |

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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:** «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (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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