---
title: All good things go in threes, so Matte and his wife fished for salmo… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: All good things go in threes, so Matte and his wife fished for salmon in spring, for herring in summer, and for cod in winter. Who acts: good things, Matte. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23, 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/pg3454/23/28/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23, sentence 28

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All good things go in threes, so Matte and his wife fished for salmon in spring, for herring in summer, and for cod in winter.

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**Who acts:** good things, Matte · **What happens:** go, fish · **To what, where:** threes

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (good things, Matte), 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:pg3454:23:28
# text = All good things go in threes, so Matte and his wife fished for salmon in spring, for herring in summer, and for cod in winter.
1	All	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	3	det	_	_
2	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	go	go	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	threes	three	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	so	so	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
9	Matte	Matte	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	conj	_	_
13	fished	fish	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
14	for	for	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	salmon	salmon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
16	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	spring	spring	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
19	for	for	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	herring	herring	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
21	in	in	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	summer	summer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	26	punct	_	_
24	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	26	cc	_	_
25	for	for	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
26	cod	cod	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	parataxis	_	_
27	in	in	ADP	IN	_	28	case	_	_
28	winter	winter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
29	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | present | all good things |  |  | threes |  |  | vn occur-48.3-2 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme in three=Location |
| 2 | **fish** | past | Matte and rock's wife |  |  |  | spring | for salmon; for herring in summer | vn hunt-35.1 «NP V PP.theme PP.location»: agent=Agent for salmon=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:** «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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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