---
title: Sometimes they would pull the sick lady's ears with their long and h… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Sometimes they would pull the sick lady's ears with their long and hairy paws. Who acts: brothers. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Fairy Ointment, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Fairy Ointment, sentence 19

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Sometimes they would pull the sick lady's ears with their long and hairy paws.

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**Who acts:** brothers · **What happens:** pull · **To what, where:** ears

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Fairy Ointment. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (brothers), 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:pg7439:46:19
# text = Sometimes they would pull the sick lady's ears with their long and hairy paws.
1	Sometimes	sometimes	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	4	advmod	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	pull	pull	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	sick	sick	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	lady	lady	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	's	's	PART	POS	_	7	case	_	_
9	ears	ear	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
10	with	with	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
11	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
12	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	hairy	hairy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	conj	_	_
15	paws	paw	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pull** | would | brothers *= brother* | the sick lady's ears |  |  |  | with brothers's long paws; sometimes *property* | vn push-12-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ear=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:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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