---
title: But the helmet would not come, and the harder they pulled, the faste… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the helmet would not come, and the harder they pulled, the faster it seemed to be, till the poor girl yelled with pain. Who acts: helmet, neighbours, it, poor girl. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Maiden With the Wooden Helmet, with its dependency tree and the pragmatic
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Maiden With the Wooden Helmet, sentence 41

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But the helmet would not come, and the harder they pulled, the faster it seemed to be, till the poor girl yelled with pain.

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**Who acts:** helmet, neighbours, it, poor girl · **What happens:** not come, pull, be, seem, yell

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Maiden With the Wooden Helmet. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (helmet, neighbours, it, poor girl), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg641:2749`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg641:31:41
# text = But the helmet would not come, and the harder they pulled, the faster it seemed to be, till the poor girl yelled with pain.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	helmet	helmet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
4	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
6	come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	harder	hard	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	12	advmod	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	pulled	pull	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	advcl	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	faster	fast	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	17	xcomp	_	_
16	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
17	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
18	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
19	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	cop	_	_
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	25	punct	_	_
21	till	till	SCONJ	IN	_	25	mark	_	_
22	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	24	det	_	_
23	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	24	amod	_	_
24	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	nsubj	_	_
25	yelled	yell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	advcl	_	_
26	with	with	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
27	pain	pain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	obl	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **come** | would | the helmet |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **pull** | past | neighbours *= neighbour* |  |  |  |  | hard *property* | vn slide-11.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | fast *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **seem** | past | it |  |  |  |  |  | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **yell** *speech: express* | past | the poor girl |  |  |  |  | with pain | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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