---
title: But when he had dug up the ground, what did he find? — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But when he had dug up the ground, what did he find? Who acts: man. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Envious Neighbour, 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/pg641/18/20/)

<!-- 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 Violet Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/) / [The Envious Neighbour](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/18/) / 20

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Envious Neighbour, sentence 20

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But when he had dug up the ground, what did he find?

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** dig up, find · **To what, where:** ground

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Envious Neighbour. 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.

<!-- .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:pg641:18:20
# text = But when he had dug up the ground, what did he find?
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	5	mark	_	_
3	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	dug	dig	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	up	up	ADP	RP	_	5	compound:prt	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	13	obj	_	_
11	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **dig up** | past · perfect | man | the ground |  |  |  |  | vn poke-19-1-1-1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent ground=Theme |
| 2 | **find** | past · do-support | man | the ground |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Topic |

<!-- .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 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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/18/19/)
- next →: [sentence 21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/18/21/)
- ↑ back to [The Envious Neighbour](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/18/)