---
title: I had been to the fair and bought a butter-churn, and when I saw you… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: I had been to the fair and bought a butter-churn, and when I saw you, I got into it, and rolled down the hill.” Who acts: I. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/17/61/)

<!-- 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/) / 61

# English Fairy Tales, The Story of the Three Little Pigs, sentence 61

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
I had been to the fair and bought a butter-churn, and when I saw you, I got into it, and rolled down the hill.”

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** be, buy, see, get, roll down · **To what, where:** butter churn, you, churn, hill

<!-- .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 (I), 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:pg7439:17:61
# text = I had been to the fair and bought a butter-churn, and when I saw you, I got into it, and rolled down the hill.”
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
3	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	6	cop	_	_
4	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	fair	fair	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	bought	buy	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
10	butter	butter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	churn	churn	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
15	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	17	advmod	_	_
16	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
17	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	advcl	_	_
18	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
20	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
21	got	get	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	advcl	_	_
22	into	into	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
23	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	26	punct	_	_
25	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	26	cc	_	_
26	rolled	roll	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	parataxis	_	_
27	down	down	ADP	IN	_	29	case	_	_
28	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	29	det	_	_
29	hill	hill	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
30	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
31	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past · perfect | I |  |  |  |  | fair *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **buy** | past | I *not said here* | a butter churn |  |  |  |  | vn accept-77.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent churn=Theme |
| 3 | **see** | past | I | you |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer you=Stimulus |
| 4 | **get** | past | I |  |  | churn |  |  | vn escape-51.1 «NP V PP.destination»: agent=Theme into it=Destination |
| 5 | **roll down** | participle |  | the hill |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hill=Agent |

<!-- .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 60](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/17/60/)
- next →: [sentence 62](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/17/62/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of the Three Little Pigs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/17/)