---
title: But it was no axe they heard, but a bough he had tied on a dead tree… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But it was no axe they heard, but a bough he had tied on a dead tree, and that was blown about by the wind. Who acts: axe, Hansel, father, wind. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Hansel and Grettel, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Hansel and Grettel, sentence 32

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But it was no axe they heard, but a bough he had tied on a dead tree, and that was blown about by the wind.

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**Who acts:** axe, Hansel, father, wind · **What happens:** be, hear, tie, blow · **To what, where:** axe, bough, that

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Hansel and Grettel. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (axe, Hansel, father, wind), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg503:2721`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg503:35:32
# text = But it was no axe they heard, but a bough he had tied on a dead tree, and that was blown about by the wind.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	5	det	_	_
5	axe	axe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	bough	bough	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
13	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	tied	tie	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	11	acl:relcl	_	_
15	on	on	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
17	dead	dead	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
21	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	23	nsubj:pass	_	_
22	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	23	aux:pass	_	_
23	blown	blow	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	14	conj	_	_
24	about	about	ADV	RB	_	23	advmod	_	_
25	by	by	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
26	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	27	det	_	_
27	wind	wind	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	obl:agent	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | axe | no axe but a bough |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **hear** | past | Hansel | no axe but a bough *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer axe=Stimulus |
| 3 | **tie** | past · perfect | father | a bough *not said here* |  |  |  | on a dead tree | vn tape-22.4 «NP V NP PP.co-patient»: agent=Agent bough=Patient on tree=Co-Patient |
| 4 | **blow** | past · passive | the wind | that |  |  |  | about *property* | vn split-23.2 «NP V NP apart»: agent=Agent subject=Patient |

<!-- .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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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