---
title: This time it was a dish of milk she poured upon the ashes, saying: — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: This time it was a dish of milk she poured upon the ashes, saying: Who acts: usual, witch. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Birch, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Wonderful Birch, sentence 89

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This time it was a dish of milk she poured upon the ashes, saying:

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**Who acts:** usual, witch · **What happens:** be, pour, say · **To what, where:** dish · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Birch. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (usual, witch), 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:pg540:14:89
# text = This time it was a dish of milk she poured upon the ashes, saying:
1	This	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	2	det	_	_
2	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	dish	dish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	acl:relcl	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	milk	milk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
9	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	poured	pour	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	ashes	ash	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
15	saying	say	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	10	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | usual | a dish |  |  |  | of milk | tree rules |
| 2 | **pour** | past | witch |  |  |  | time | upon the ashes | vn substance\_emission-43.4-1 «NP V»: agent=Source |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | gerund | witch *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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