---
title: But few can climb without using their hands at all. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But few can climb without using their hands at all. Who acts: few. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 19, 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/pg3282/19/80/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 19, sentence 80

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But few can climb without using their hands at all.

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**Who acts:** few · **What happens:** climb, use · **To what, where:** hands, all

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 19. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (few), 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:pg3282:19:80
# text = But few can climb without using their hands at all.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	climb	climb	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	without	without	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
6	using	use	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
7	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	hands	hand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	_
9	at	at	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **climb** | can | few |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **use** | gerund | few *not said here* | girls's hands |  | all |  |  | vn eat-39.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hand=Patient |

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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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