---
title: But that was easier said than done. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But that was easier said than done. Who acts: that. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24, 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/pg3454/24/142/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24, sentence 142

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But that was easier said than done.

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**Who acts:** that · **What happens:** be, say, do · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac 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 (that), 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:pg3454:24:142
# text = But that was easier said than done.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	easier	easy	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	conj	_	_
6	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
7	done	do	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | that |  |  |  |  | easy *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | participle | that *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **do** | participle | that *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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