---
title: The tailor dived into his pocket and gave him a handful, but they we… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The tailor dived into his pocket and gave him a handful, but they were pebbles, not nuts. Who acts: tailor, tailors. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of a Clever Tailor, 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/pg7277/51/26/)

<!-- 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 Story of a Clever Tailor](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/51/) / 26

# The Green Fairy Book, The Story of a Clever Tailor, sentence 26

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The tailor dived into his pocket and gave him a handful, but they were pebbles, not nuts.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** tailor, tailors · **What happens:** dive, give, be · **To what, where:** pocket, handful, bear, pebbles

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of a Clever Tailor. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tailor, tailors), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg7277:51:26
# text = The tailor dived into his pocket and gave him a handful, but they were pebbles, not nuts.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	tailor	tailor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	dived	dive	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	into	into	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	pocket	pocket	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	gave	give	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
9	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	iobj	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	handful	handful	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
13	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
14	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
15	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
16	pebbles	pebble	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
18	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	19	advmod	_	_
19	nuts	nut	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **dive** | past | the tailor |  |  | bear's pocket |  |  | vn meander-47.7 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme into pocket=Location |
| 2 | **give** | past | the tailor *not said here* | a handful | bear |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent he=Recipient handful=Theme |
| 3 | **is a** | past | tailors *= tailor* | pebbles and nuts |  |  |  |  | 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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 25](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/51/25/)
- next →: [sentence 27](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/51/27/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of a Clever Tailor](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/51/)