---
title: For three days and three nights she struggled through it, but could… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: For three days and three nights she struggled through it, but could find nothing. Who acts: mother. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Pig, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Enchanted Pig, sentence 161

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For three days and three nights she struggled through it, but could find nothing.

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**Who acts:** mother · **What happens:** struggle, find · **To what, where:** bundle, nothing

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Pig. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother), 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:pg540:12:161
# text = For three days and three nights she struggled through it, but could find nothing.
1	For	for	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	3	nummod	_	_
3	days	day	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
5	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	6	nummod	_	_
6	nights	night	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	conj	_	_
7	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	struggled	struggle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	through	through	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
13	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	conj	_	_
15	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **struggle** | past | mother |  |  | bundle | day |  | vn battle-36.4 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **find** | could | mother *not said here* | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Topic |

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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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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