---
title: He went to the little pig's house, and told him how frightened he ha… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He went to the little pig's house, and told him how frightened he had been by a great round thing which came down the hill past him. Who acts: wolf, great round thing. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story of the Three Little Pigs, with its dependency tree and the pragmatic
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/17/58/)

<!-- 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/) / [English Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/) / [The Story of the Three Little Pigs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/17/) / 58

# English Fairy Tales, The Story of the Three Little Pigs, sentence 58

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He went to the little pig's house, and told him how frightened he had been by a great round thing which came down the hill past him.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** wolf, great round thing · **What happens:** go, tell, frighten, be, come down · **To what, where:** house, wolf, hill · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (wolf, great round thing), 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:pg7439:17:58
# text = He went to the little pig's house, and told him how frightened he had been by a great round thing which came down the hill past him.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	pig	pig	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	's	's	PART	POS	_	6	case	_	_
8	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
12	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	iobj	_	_
13	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	14	advmod	_	_
14	frightened	frighten	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	ccomp	_	_
15	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	nsubj	_	_
16	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	22	aux	_	_
17	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	22	cop	_	_
18	by	by	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
20	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
21	round	round	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	parataxis	_	_
23	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	24	nsubj	_	_
24	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	22	acl:relcl	_	_
25	down	down	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
26	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	27	det	_	_
27	hill	hill	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	obl	_	_
28	past	past	ADP	IN	_	29	case	_	_
29	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	24	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
30	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | past | wolf |  |  | the little pig's house |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to house=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | wolf *not said here* |  | wolf |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP what S»: agent=Agent he=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 3 | **frighten** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |
| 4 | **is** | past · perfect | wolf |  |  |  |  | by a great round thing | tree rules |
| 5 | **come down** | past | a great round thing | the hill |  |  |  | past wolf | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location hill=Theme |

<!-- .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:** «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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 57](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/17/57/)
- next →: [sentence 59](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/17/59/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of the Three Little Pigs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/17/)