---
title: Hardly had the spinner begun to work when the Count began to feel hi… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Hardly had the spinner begun to work when the Count began to feel his pains grow less. Who acts: Count, pains, death. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Nettle Spinner, sentence 145

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Hardly had the spinner begun to work when the Count began to feel his pains grow less.

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**Who acts:** Count, pains, death · **What happens:** have, begin, work, feel, grow, pain · **To what, where:** spinner

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Count, pains, death), 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:pg540:42:145
# text = Hardly had the spinner begun to work when the Count began to feel his pains grow less.
1	Hardly	hardly	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	spinner	spinner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	begun	begin	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	acl	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	work	work	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	11	advmod	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	Count	Count	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
11	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	feel	feel	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
14	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	pains	pain	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	_
16	grow	grow	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	ccomp	_	_
17	less	less	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	16	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past |  | the spinner |  |  |  | hardly *property* | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent spinner=Patient |
| 2 | **begin** | participle |  | the spinner *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **work** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn employment-95.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **begin** | past | the Count |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 5 | **feel** | to-infinitive | the Count *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn conjecture-29.5-2 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 6 | **grow** | present | death's pains |  |  |  |  | less *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 7 | **pain** |  | death |  |  |  |  |  | nom pain «state transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .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 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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