---
title: He had hardly said the words before they were back in the sack again. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He had hardly said the words before they were back in the sack again. Who acts: husband, words. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Two in a Sack, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, Two in a Sack, sentence 108

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He had hardly said the words before they were back in the sack again.

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**Who acts:** husband, words · **What happens:** say, be · **To what, where:** words, sack · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Two in a Sack. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (husband, words), 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:pg641:17:108
# text = He had hardly said the words before they were back in the sack again.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	hardly	hardly	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	said	say	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
7	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	back	back	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	sack	sack	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
14	again	again	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past · perfect | husband | the words |  |  |  | hardly *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent word=Topic |
| 2 | **is** | past | words *= word* |  |  | the sack | again | back *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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