---
title: They were not particularly good, but when one is hungry anything tas… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They were not particularly good, but when one is hungry anything tastes well. Who acts: pancakes, anything. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 31, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/31/47/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Pink Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/) / [The Pink Fairy Book, part 31](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/31/) / 47

# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 31, sentence 47

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They were not particularly good, but when one is hungry anything tastes well.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** pancakes, anything · **What happens:** not be, be, taste · **To what, where:** anything

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 31. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (pancakes, anything), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg5615:31:47
# text = They were not particularly good, but when one is hungry anything tastes well.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
4	particularly	particularly	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
8	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	13	mark	_	_
9	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	12	nummod	_	_
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
11	hungry	hungry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	13	nsubj	_	_
13	tastes	taste	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
14	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	13	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** | past | pancakes *= pancake* |  |  |  |  | good, particularly *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is a** | present |  | anything |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **taste** | present | anything |  |  |  |  | well *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 46](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/31/46/)
- next →: [sentence 48](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/31/48/)
- ↑ back to [The Pink Fairy Book, part 31](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/31/)