---
title: All day long the youth toiled, but he might as well have tried to em… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: All day long the youth toiled, but he might as well have tried to empty the ocean. Who acts: youth. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 28, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 28, sentence 102

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All day long the youth toiled, but he might as well have tried to empty the ocean.

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**Who acts:** youth · **What happens:** toil, try, empty · **To what, where:** ocean

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 28. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (youth), 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:pg3454:28:102
# text = All day long the youth toiled, but he might as well have tried to empty the ocean.
1	All	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	2	det	_	_
2	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	6	advmod	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	youth	youth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	toiled	toil	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
10	might	might	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
11	as	as	ADV	RB	ExtPos=CCONJ	14	cc	_	_
12	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	11	fixed	_	_
13	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	tried	try	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	empty	empty	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	xcomp	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	ocean	ocean	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **toil** | past | the youth |  |  |  | day | long *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **try** | might · perfect | youth |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **empty** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | youth *not said here* | the ocean |  |  |  |  | vn clear-10.3-1 «NP V NP.source»: agent=Agent ocean=Source |

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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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