---
title: ‘A house of mud,’ replied Browny, looking longingly at a wet puddle… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘A house of mud,’ replied Browny, looking longingly at a wet puddle in the corner of the yard. Who acts: house. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Little Pigs, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Three Little Pigs, sentence 20

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‘A house of mud,’ replied Browny, looking longingly at a wet puddle in the corner of the yard.

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**Who acts:** house · **What happens:** reply, look · **To what, where:** Browny

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Little Pigs. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (house), 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:pg7277:13:20
# text = ‘A house of mud,’ replied Browny, looking longingly at a wet puddle in the corner of the yard.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	mud	mud	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
8	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	Browny	Browny	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	looking	look	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	_
12	longingly	longingly	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
13	at	at	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	wet	wet	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	puddle	puddle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
17	in	in	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	corner	corner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod	_	_
20	of	of	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	yard	yard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | a house of mud | Browny |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent browny=Topic |
| 2 | **look** | gerund | a house of mud *not said here* |  |  |  |  | at a wet puddle in the corner of the yard; longingly *property* | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at puddle=Theme |

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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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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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