---
title: ‘Foolish, foolish child!’ said the mother pig, looking quite distres… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Foolish, foolish child!’ said the mother pig, looking quite distressed. Who acts: Foolish foolish child. 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 23

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‘Foolish, foolish child!’ said the mother pig, looking quite distressed.

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**Who acts:** Foolish foolish child · **What happens:** say, look, distress · **To what, where:** mother pig · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Foolish foolish child), 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:pg7277:13:23
# text = ‘Foolish, foolish child!’ said the mother pig, looking quite distressed.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Foolish	foolish	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	foolish	foolish	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
11	pig	pig	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
13	looking	look	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	_
14	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	distressed	distress	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	13	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Foolish foolish child | the mother pig |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent pig=Topic |
| 2 | **look** | gerund | Foolish foolish child *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **distress** | participle | Foolish foolish child *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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