---
title: When he found that he could not, with all his huffing and puffing, b… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: When he found that he could not, with all his huffing and puffing, blow the house down, he said: Who acts: first. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story of the Three Little Pigs, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, The Story of the Three Little Pigs, sentence 29

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When he found that he could not, with all his huffing and puffing, blow the house down, he said:

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**Who acts:** first · **What happens:** find, blow down, say, huff · **To what, where:** house · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story of the Three Little Pigs. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (first), 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:pg7439:17:29
# text = When he found that he could not, with all his huffing and puffing, blow the house down, he said:
1	When	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	found	find	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	22	advcl	_	_
4	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	ccomp	_	_
7	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	with	with	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
10	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	12	det:predet	_	_
11	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	huffing	huffing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	puffing	puffing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
16	blow	blow	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	_
19	down	down	ADP	RP	_	16	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
21	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	nsubj	_	_
22	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	22	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **find** | past | first |  |  |  |  | with first's huffing and puffing | vn declare-29.4-1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **blow down** | infinitive |  | the house |  |  |  |  | vn split-23.2 «NP V NP apart»: agent=Agent house=Patient |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | first |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **huff** |  | first |  |  |  |  |  | nom huffing «act intransitive»: poss=agent |

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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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