---
title: He was to thresh that day, said the squire; the other twelve men wer… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He was to thresh that day, said the squire; the other twelve men were already busy at it. Who acts: Hans, other twelve men. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 12, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/12/63/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 12, sentence 63

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He was to thresh that day, said the squire; the other twelve men were already busy at it.

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**Who acts:** Hans, other twelve men · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** squire, kitchen · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Hans, other twelve men), 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:pg5615:12:63
# text = He was to thresh that day, said the squire; the other twelve men were already busy at it.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	thresh	thresh	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	det	_	_
6	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	squire	squire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	18	punct	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
13	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
14	twelve	twelve	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	15	nummod	_	_
15	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	nsubj	_	_
16	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
17	already	already	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	busy	busy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
19	at	at	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | Hans |  |  |  | day | thresh *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Hans *not said here* | the squire |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent squire=Topic |
| 3 | **is** | past | the other twelve men |  |  | kitchen |  | busy *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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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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