---
title: She churned quantities of butter, and he hired two men to help him i… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: She churned quantities of butter, and he hired two men to help him in his fishing. Who acts: rock, Matte. 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/pg3454/24/16/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24, sentence 16

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She churned quantities of butter, and he hired two men to help him in his fishing.

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**Who acts:** rock, Matte · **What happens:** churn, hire, help, fish · **To what, where:** quantities, two men, Matte, fishing

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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 (rock, 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:pg3454:24:16
# text = She churned quantities of butter, and he hired two men to help him in his fishing.
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	churned	churn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	quantities	quantity	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	butter	butter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	hired	hire	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
10	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	11	nummod	_	_
11	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	advcl	_	_
14	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	fishing	fishing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **churn** | past | rock | quantities of butter |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent quantity=Product |
| 2 | **hire** | past | Matte | two men |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent man=Theme |
| 3 | **help** | to-infinitive | Matte *not said here* |  | Matte | Matte's fishing |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Beneficiary |
| 4 | **fish** |  | Matte |  |  |  |  |  | nom fishing «act transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .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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