---
title: He had no peace or comfort at all, and really hardly knew how to bea… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He had no peace or comfort at all, and really hardly knew how to bear it. Who acts: man. 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 3

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He had no peace or comfort at all, and really hardly knew how to bear it.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** have, know, bear · **To what, where:** peace, all, comfort

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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 (man), 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:pg641:17:3
# text = He had no peace or comfort at all, and really hardly knew how to bear it.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	4	det	_	_
4	peace	peace	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	comfort	comfort	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	_
7	at	at	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	really	really	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
12	hardly	hardly	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	knew	know	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
14	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	16	advmod	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	bear	bear	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | man | no peace or comfort |  | all |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent peace=Patient |
| 2 | **know** | past |  |  |  |  |  | hardly *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 3 | **bear** | to-infinitive |  | comfort |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Patient |

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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 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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