---
title: ‘A house of cabbage,’ answered Whitey, with a mouth full, and scarce… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘A house of cabbage,’ answered Whitey, with a mouth full, and scarcely raising her snout out of the trough in which she was grubbing for some potato-parings. 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 ev
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Three Little Pigs, sentence 22

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‘A house of cabbage,’ answered Whitey, with a mouth full, and scarcely raising her snout out of the trough in which she was grubbing for some potato-parings.

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**Who acts:** house · **What happens:** answer, raise, grub · **To what, where:** Whitey, snout, trough

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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:pg7277:13:22
# text = ‘A house of cabbage,’ answered Whitey, with a mouth full, and scarcely raising her snout out of the trough in which she was grubbing for some potato-parings.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	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	cabbage	cabbage	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
8	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	Whitey	Whitey	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	with	with	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	mouth	mouth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	parataxis	_	_
14	full	full	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
17	scarcely	scarcely	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	raising	raise	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	_
19	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	20	nmod:poss	_	_
20	snout	snout	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	_
21	out	out	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
22	of	of	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
23	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	24	det	_	_
24	trough	trough	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	_
25	in	in	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
26	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	29	obl	_	_
27	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	29	nsubj	_	_
28	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	29	aux	_	_
29	grubbing	grub	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	24	acl:relcl	_	_
30	for	for	ADP	IN	_	34	case	_	_
31	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	34	det	_	_
32	potato	potato	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	34	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
33	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	32	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
34	parings	paring	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	29	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
35	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | a house of cabbage |  | Whitey |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent whitey=Eventuality |
| 2 | **raise** | gerund | a house of cabbage *not said here* | house's snout |  | the trough |  | scarcely *property* | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent snout=Theme out trough=Destination |
| 3 | **grub** | past · progressive | house |  |  | the trough |  | for some potato parings | 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 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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