---
title: But the churl would rather than a great deal he had not hired him. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But the churl would rather than a great deal he had not hired him. Who acts: Churl. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack and His Master, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, Jack and His Master, sentence 81

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But the churl would rather than a great deal he had not hired him.

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**Who acts:** Churl · **What happens:** not hire · **To what, where:** fear

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack and His Master. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Churl), 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:pg7885:24:81
# text = But the churl would rather than a great deal he had not hired him.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	churl	churl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
4	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
5	rather	rather	ADV	RB	ExtPos=CCONJ	9	cc	_	_
6	than	than	ADP	IN	_	5	fixed	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	deal	deal	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	hired	hire	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	9	acl:relcl	_	_
14	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **hire** | past · perfect | Churl | fear |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=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:** «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7885 (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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