---
title: An old woman was sweeping her house, and she found a little crooked… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: An old woman was sweeping her house, and she found a little crooked sixpence. Who acts: old woman, woman. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Old Woman and Her Pig, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, The Old Woman and Her Pig, sentence 1

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An old woman was sweeping her house, and she found a little crooked sixpence.

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**Who acts:** old woman, woman · **What happens:** sweep, find · **To what, where:** house, little crooked sixpence

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Old Woman and Her Pig. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old woman, 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:pg7439:9:1
# text = An old woman was sweeping her house, and she found a little crooked sixpence.
1	An	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	sweeping	sweep	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	found	find	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
13	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
14	crooked	crooked	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	sixpence	sixpence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sweep** | past · progressive | a old woman | woman's house |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme house=Trajectory |
| 2 | **find** | past | woman | a little crooked sixpence |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sixpence=Topic |

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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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