---
title: They received their bit of bread, but it was even smaller than the t… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They received their bit of bread, but it was even smaller than the time before. Who acts: children, bread. 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 52

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They received their bit of bread, but it was even smaller than the time before.

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**Who acts:** children, bread · **What happens:** receive, be · **To what, where:** bit

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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 (children, bread), 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:pg503:35:52
# text = They received their bit of bread, but it was even smaller than the time before.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	received	receive	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	bit	bit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	bread	bread	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
11	even	even	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	smaller	small	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	2	conj	_	_
13	than	than	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
16	before	before	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **receive** | past | children *= child* | children's bit of bread |  |  |  |  | vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bit=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | past | bread |  |  |  | time | small *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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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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