---
title: “Why, it would take us YEARS,” exclaimed another. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Why, it would take us YEARS,” exclaimed another. Who acts: it. 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/pg3282/12/7/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 12, sentence 7

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“Why, it would take us YEARS,” exclaimed another.

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**Who acts:** it · **What happens:** take, exclaim · **To what, where:** us, another · **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 (it), 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:pg3282:12:7
# text = “Why, it would take us YEARS,” exclaimed another.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
7	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	_
8	YEARS	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
11	exclaimed	exclaim	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	another	another	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** *in a quote* | would | it |  | us |  | year |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP ADVP»: agent=Instrument we=Destination |
| 2 | **exclaim** *speech: express* | past |  | another |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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