---
title: The Wolf was not long before he got to the old woman’s house. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The Wolf was not long before he got to the old woman’s house. Who acts: Wolf, Red. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Little Red Riding Hood, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Little Red Riding Hood, sentence 16

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The Wolf was not long before he got to the old woman’s house.

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**Who acts:** Wolf, Red · **What happens:** not be, get

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Little Red Riding Hood. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wolf, Red), 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:pg503:9:16
# text = The Wolf was not long before he got to the old woman’s house.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Wolf	Wolf	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
6	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	got	get	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
9	to	to	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’s	's	PART	POS	_	12	case	_	_
14	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** | past | the Wolf |  |  |  |  | long *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **get** | past | Red |  |  |  |  | to the old woman's house *result* | vn convert-26.6.2 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Patient to house=Result |

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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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