---
title: Jack found it hard to hoist the donkey on his shoulders, but at last… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Jack found it hard to hoist the donkey on his shoulders, but at last he did it, and began walking slowly home with his prize. Who acts: Jack. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Lazy Jack, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Lazy Jack, sentence 27

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Jack found it hard to hoist the donkey on his shoulders, but at last he did it, and began walking slowly home with his prize.

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**Who acts:** Jack · **What happens:** find, hoist, do, begin, walk · **To what, where:** keeper, donkey, shoulders, last · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Lazy Jack. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Jack), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg7439:1378`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg7439:34:27
# text = Jack found it hard to hoist the donkey on his shoulders, but at last he did it, and began walking slowly home with his prize.
1	Jack	Jack	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	found	find	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	expl	_	_
4	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	xcomp	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	hoist	hoist	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	csubj	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	donkey	donkey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	on	on	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	shoulders	shoulder	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
13	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
14	at	at	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	obl	_	_
16	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
17	did	do	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
18	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obj	_	_
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
21	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	conj	_	_
22	walking	walk	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	21	xcomp	_	_
23	slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	22	advmod	_	_
24	home	home	ADV	RB	_	22	advmod	_	_
25	with	with	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
26	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	27	nmod:poss	_	_
27	prize	prize	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	obl	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **find** | past | Jack | keeper |  |  |  | hard *property* | vn declare-29.4-1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **hoist** | to-infinitive |  | the donkey |  | donkey's shoulders |  |  | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent donkey=Theme on shoulder=Destination |
| 3 | **do** | past | Jack | keeper |  | last |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality |
| 4 | **begin** | past | Jack *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 5 | **walk** | gerund | Jack *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with donkey's prize; home, slowly *property* | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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