---
title: The first that went off met a man with a bundle of straw, and said t… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The first that went off met a man with a bundle of straw, and said to him: 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 3

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The first that went off met a man with a bundle of straw, and said to him:

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**Who acts:** first · **What happens:** go off, meet, say · **To what, where:** man · **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:pg7439:17:3
# text = The first that went off met a man with a bundle of straw, and said to him:
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	first	first	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	4	nsubj	_	_
3	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	4	nsubj	_	_
4	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	off	off	ADP	RP	_	4	compound:prt	_	_
6	met	meet	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	with	with	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	bundle	bundle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	straw	straw	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
16	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
17	to	to	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go off** | past | the first |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-2 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **meet** | past | the first *not said here* | a man |  |  |  | with a bundle of straw | vn satisfy-55.7 «NP V NP PP»: agent=Agent man=Theme with bundle=Instrument |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the first *not said here* |  | man |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to he=Recipient |

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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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