---
title: "It would take too much time to explain," said the stork, flying qui… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "It would take too much time to explain," said the stork, flying quickly away. Who acts: It, stork. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Fir Tree, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/33/24/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Fir Tree, sentence 24

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"It would take too much time to explain," said the stork, flying quickly away.

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**Who acts:** It, stork · **What happens:** take, explain, say, fly · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Fir Tree. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (It, stork), 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:pg27200:33:24
# text = "It would take too much time to explain," said the stork, flying quickly away.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	ccomp	_	_
5	too	too	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	explain	explain	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	stork	stork	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
16	flying	fly	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	12	advcl	_	_
17	quickly	quickly	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	away	away	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** *in a quote* | would | It |  |  |  | time |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **explain** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the stork |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **fly** | gerund | the stork *not said here* |  |  |  |  | away *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «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:** «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (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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