---
title: Then he said: “Wife, bring me the hen that lays the golden eggs.” — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Then he said: “Wife, bring me the hen that lays the golden eggs.” Who acts: three, Wife, hen. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack and the Beanstalk, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Jack and the Beanstalk, sentence 88

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Then he said: “Wife, bring me the hen that lays the golden eggs.”

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**Who acts:** three, Wife, hen · **What happens:** say, bring, lay · **To what, where:** hen, three, golden eggs · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack and the Beanstalk. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (three, Wife, hen), 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:pg7439:16:88
# text = Then he said: “Wife, bring me the hen that lays the golden eggs.”
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	8	punct	_	_
5	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	Wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
8	bring	bring	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	ccomp	_	_
9	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	hen	hen	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
12	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	13	nsubj	_	_
13	lays	lay	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	acl:relcl	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	golden	golden	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	eggs	egg	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | three |  |  |  | then |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **bring** *in a quote* | infinitive | Wife | the hen | three |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3-1 «NP V NP NP»: agent=Agent i=Destination hen=Theme |
| 3 | **lay** *in a quote* | present | the hen | the golden eggs |  |  |  |  | vn create-26.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent egg=Result |

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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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