---
title: After all, anyone can be killed by a blow from a stick if it is only… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: After all, anyone can be killed by a blow from a stick if it is only hard enough!” Who acts: blow. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 24, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/24/90/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Brown Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/) / [The Brown Fairy Book, part 24](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/24/) / 90

# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 24, sentence 90

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
After all, anyone can be killed by a blow from a stick if it is only hard enough!”

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** blow · **What happens:** kill, be · **To what, where:** anyone

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 24. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (blow), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg3282:24:90
# text = After all, anyone can be killed by a blow from a stick if it is only hard enough!”
1	After	after	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	4	det	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	anyone	anyone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	7	nsubj:pass	_	_
5	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	aux:pass	_	_
7	killed	kill	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
8	by	by	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	blow	blow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
11	from	from	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	stick	stick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	_
14	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	expl	_	_
16	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
17	only	only	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	advcl	_	_
19	enough	enough	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **kill** | can · passive | a blow from a stick | anyone |  |  |  |  | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent subject=Theme |
| 2 | **is** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | a blow from a stick *not said here* |  |  |  |  | enough, hard *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 89](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/24/89/)
- next →: [sentence 91](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/24/91/)
- ↑ back to [The Brown Fairy Book, part 24](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/24/)