---
title: Now Browny was a very dirty little pig, and I am sorry to say spent… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Now Browny was a very dirty little pig, and I am sorry to say spent most of his time rolling and wallowing about in the mud. Who acts: Browny, I. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Little Pigs, 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/pg7277/13/3/)

<!-- 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 Green Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/) / [The Three Little Pigs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/13/) / 3

# The Green Fairy Book, The Three Little Pigs, sentence 3

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Now Browny was a very dirty little pig, and I am sorry to say spent most of his time rolling and wallowing about in the mud.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Browny, I · **What happens:** be, say, spend, roll, wallow · **To what, where:** dirty little pig, most, mud · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (Browny, I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg7277:1061`): 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:pg7277:13:3
# text = Now Browny was a very dirty little pig, and I am sorry to say spent most of his time rolling and wallowing about in the mud.
1	Now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	8	advmod	_	_
2	Browny	Browny	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
5	very	very	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	dirty	dirty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
7	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	pig	pig	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
11	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
13	sorry	sorry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	parataxis	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
16	spent	spend	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
17	most	most	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	16	obj	_	_
18	of	of	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	20	nmod:poss	_	_
20	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nmod	_	_
21	rolling	roll	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	16	advcl	_	_
22	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
23	wallowing	wallow	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	21	conj	_	_
24	about	about	ADV	RB	_	23	advmod	_	_
25	in	in	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
26	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	27	det	_	_
27	mud	mud	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	obl	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | Browny | a dirty little pig |  |  | now |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | present | I |  |  |  |  | sorry *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **spend** | past | Browny *not said here* | most of eldest's time |  |  |  |  | vn consume-66-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent most=Asset |
| 5 | **roll** | gerund | Browny *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 6 | **wallow** | gerund | Browny *not said here* |  |  | the mud |  | about *property* | vn marvel-31.3 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |

<!-- .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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/13/2/)
- next →: [sentence 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/13/4/)
- ↑ back to [The Three Little Pigs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/13/)