---
title: But once more the brownie stepped in, and was better than ten labour… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But once more the brownie stepped in, and was better than ten labourers. Who acts: brownie. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 37, 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/pg3454/37/70/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 37, sentence 70

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But once more the brownie stepped in, and was better than ten labourers.

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**Who acts:** brownie · **What happens:** step in, be

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 37. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (brownie), 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:pg3454:37:70
# text = But once more the brownie stepped in, and was better than ten labourers.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	3	advmod	_	_
3	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	6	advmod	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	brownie	brownie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	stepped	step	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	in	in	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
11	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	6	parataxis	_	_
12	than	than	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	ten	ten	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	nummod	_	_
14	labourers	labourer	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **step in** | past | the brownie |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | than ten labourers; good *property* | tree rules |

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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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