---
title: He did not take long to state his case. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He did not take long to state his case. Who acts: man. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 20, 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/pg3454/20/19/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 20, sentence 19

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He did not take long to state his case.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** not take, state · **To what, where:** case

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 20. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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:pg3454:20:19
# text = He did not take long to state his case.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	4	advmod	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	state	state	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	advcl	_	_
8	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	case	case	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **take** | past · do-support | man |  |  |  |  | long *property* | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **state** *speech: other* | to-infinitive | man *not said here* | man's case |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent case=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 Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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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