---
title: ‘We shall find some means,’ said his wife; and the cow found the mea… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘We shall find some means,’ said his wife; and the cow found the means herself. Who acts: We, some, cow, the. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24, 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/pg3454/24/11/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24, sentence 11

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘We shall find some means,’ said his wife; and the cow found the means herself.

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**Who acts:** We, some, cow, the · **What happens:** find, mean, say · **To what, where:** wife, cow · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We, some, cow, the), 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:pg3454:24:11
# text = ‘We shall find some means,’ said his wife; and the cow found the means herself.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
5	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	6	nsubj	_	_
6	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	16	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	cow	cow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
16	found	find	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	nsubj	_	_
18	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	ccomp	_	_
19	herself	herself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	18	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **find** | shall | We |  |  |  |  |  | vn declare-29.4-1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **mean** | present | some |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | Matte's wife |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **find** | past | the cow |  |  |  |  |  | vn declare-29.4-1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 5 | **mean** | present | the | cow |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent herself=Topic |

<!-- .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:** «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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