---
title: But it was long before he came home, and the boy had grown a nice li… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But it was long before he came home, and the boy had grown a nice little laddie. Who acts: last, boy. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Nix Nought Nothing, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Nix Nought Nothing, sentence 4

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But it was long before he came home, and the boy had grown a nice little laddie.

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**Who acts:** last, boy · **What happens:** be, grow · **To what, where:** nice little laddie

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Nix Nought Nothing. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (last, boy), 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:pg7439:12:4
# text = But it was long before he came home, and the boy had grown a nice little laddie.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	7	advmod	_	_
5	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	home	home	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
13	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	grown	grow	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	7	advcl	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
16	nice	nice	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
17	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	laddie	laddie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | last |  |  |  |  | come, home, long *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **grow** | past · perfect | the boy | a nice little laddie |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location laddie=Theme |

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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:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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