---
title: Meantime Jack minded his asses and pigs, sat aloft in his tree, play… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Meantime Jack minded his asses and pigs, sat aloft in his tree, played his bagpipes, and was always merry and cheery. Who acts: Jack. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Jack My Hedgehog, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, Jack My Hedgehog, sentence 33

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Meantime Jack minded his asses and pigs, sat aloft in his tree, played his bagpipes, and was always merry and cheery.

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**Who acts:** Jack · **What happens:** mind, sit, play, be · **To what, where:** asses, tree, bagpipes

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Jack My Hedgehog. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Jack), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg7277:3170`): 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:pg7277:48:33
# text = Meantime Jack minded his asses and pigs, sat aloft in his tree, played his bagpipes, and was always merry and cheery.
1	Meantime	meantime	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	Jack	Jack	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	minded	mind	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	asses	ass	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	pigs	pig	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	conj	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
10	aloft	aloft	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
15	played	play	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
16	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	bagpipes	bagpipe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obj	_	_
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
20	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	22	cop	_	_
21	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	22	advmod	_	_
22	merry	merry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	_
23	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	24	cc	_	_
24	cheery	cheery	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	conj	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mind** | past | Jack | Jack's asses and pigs |  |  |  | meantime *property* | vn caring-75.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ass=Theme |
| 2 | **sit** | past | Jack *not said here* |  |  | Jack's tree |  | aloft *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in tree=Location |
| 3 | **play** | past | Jack *not said here* | Jack's bagpipes |  |  |  |  | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bagpipe=Theme |
| 4 | **is** | past | Jack *not said here* |  |  |  |  | always, merry *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **be** |  | Jack *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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