---
title: “Surely you could have split the rock without tearing my coat to bit… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Surely you could have split the rock without tearing my coat to bits!” Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 16, 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/pg3282/16/92/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 16, sentence 92

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“Surely you could have split the rock without tearing my coat to bits!”

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** split, tear · **To what, where:** rock, coat

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg3282:16:92
# text = “Surely you could have split the rock without tearing my coat to bits!”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Surely	surely	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
4	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	aux	_	_
6	split	split	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	rock	rock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	without	without	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
10	tearing	tear	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	_
11	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	coat	coat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	to	to	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	bits	bit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **split** *in a quote* | could · perfect | you | the rock |  |  |  | surely *property* | vn break-45.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent rock=Patient |
| 2 | **tear** *in a quote* | gerund | you *not said here* | my coat |  |  |  | to bits *result* | vn break-45.1 «NP V NP PP.result»: agent=Agent coat=Patient to bit=Result |

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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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