---
title: And the little pigs readily promised, for they had always had a grea… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And the little pigs readily promised, for they had always had a great fear of the fox, of whom they had heard many terrible tales. Who acts: little pigs, friends. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/13/32/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Three Little Pigs, sentence 32

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
And the little pigs readily promised, for they had always had a great fear of the fox, of whom they had heard many terrible tales.

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**Who acts:** little pigs, friends · **What happens:** promise, have, hear, fear · **To what, where:** great fear, many terrible tales, fox

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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 (little pigs, friends), 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:pg7277:13:32
# text = And the little pigs readily promised, for they had always had a great fear of the fox, of whom they had heard many terrible tales.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	pigs	pig	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
5	readily	readily	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	promised	promise	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
10	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
11	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	12	advmod	_	_
12	had	have	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	6	parataxis	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	fear	fear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
16	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	fox	fox	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
20	of	of	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	whom	whom	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	24	obl	_	_
22	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	24	nsubj	_	_
23	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	24	aux	_	_
24	heard	hear	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	12	conj	_	_
25	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	amod	_	_
26	terrible	terrible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	amod	_	_
27	tales	tale	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	24	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **promise** *speech: promise* | past | the little pigs |  |  |  |  | readily *property* | vn promise-37.13 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **have** | past · perfect | friends *= friend* | a great fear of the fox |  |  |  | always *property* | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fear=Patient |
| 3 | **hear** | past · perfect | friends *= friend* | many terrible tales |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer tale=Stimulus |
| 4 | **fear** |  |  | the fox |  |  |  |  | nom fear «feeling transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .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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