---
title: Helena set to work at once, but she very soon found that what her st… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Helena set to work at once, but she very soon found that what her stepmother had told her to do was an impossibility. Who acts: Helena, stepmother. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Biter Bit, part 3, sentence 126

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Helena set to work at once, but she very soon found that what her stepmother had told her to do was an impossibility.

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**Who acts:** Helena, stepmother · **What happens:** set, work, find, tell, do, be · **To what, where:** stepmother, HELENA, impossibility · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Helena, stepmother), 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:pg7277:28:126
# text = Helena set to work at once, but she very soon found that what her stepmother had told her to do was an impossibility.
1	Helena	Helena	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	set	set	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	work	work	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	at	at	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
9	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
10	very	very	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	12	advmod	_	_
12	found	find	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
13	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
14	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	18	obj	_	_
15	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	stepmother	stepmother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj:pass	_	_
17	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
18	told	tell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	12	advcl	_	_
19	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	iobj	_	_
20	to	to	PART	TO	_	21	mark	_	_
21	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	xcomp	_	_
22	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	24	cop	_	_
23	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	24	det	_	_
24	impossibility	impossibility	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **set** | past | Helena |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **work** | to-infinitive | Helena *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn employment-95.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at once=Theme |
| 3 | **find** | past | HELENA |  |  |  |  | soon *property* | vn declare-29.4-1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past · perfect · passive |  | HELENA's stepmother | HELENA |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 5 | **do** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | HELENA's stepmother *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 6 | **is a** | past |  | a impossibility |  |  |  |  | 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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