---
title: And while they were walking, a little old Woman came to the house. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: And while they were walking, a little old Woman came to the house. Who acts: Bears, little old Woman. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story of the Three Bears, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, The Story of the Three Bears, sentence 7

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And while they were walking, a little old Woman came to the house.

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**Who acts:** Bears, little old Woman · **What happens:** walk, come · **To what, where:** house

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Story of the Three Bears. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Bears, little old Woman), 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:pg7439:21:7
# text = And while they were walking, a little old Woman came to the house.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
2	while	while	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
3	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	walking	walk	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	11	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
8	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
9	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	Woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
11	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	to	to	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **walk** | past · progressive | Bears *= bear* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **come** | past | a little old Woman |  |  | the house |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to house=Initial\_Location |

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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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