---
title: “Can’t we manage to get past by the top?” asked one. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Can’t we manage to get past by the top?” asked one. Who acts: we. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 12, 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/pg3282/12/6/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 12, sentence 6

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“Can’t we manage to get past by the top?” asked one.

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**Who acts:** we · **What happens:** not manage, not get past, ask · **To what, where:** one · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (we), 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:pg3282:12:6
# text = “Can’t we manage to get past by the top?” asked one.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
4	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	manage	manage	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	parataxis	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	past	past	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
9	by	by	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	top	top	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
14	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **manage** *in a quote* | can | we |  |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **not** **get past** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | we *not said here* |  |  |  |  | by the top; past *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past |  | one |  |  |  |  | vn urge-58.1-1-1 «NP V NP that S»: agent=Agent one=Recipient clause=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:** «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (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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