---
title: He carries a club of iron, and two white men could hardly lift it. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He carries a club of iron, and two white men could hardly lift it. Who acts: hunger, two white men. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 30, 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/pg3454/30/25/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 30, sentence 25

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He carries a club of iron, and two white men could hardly lift it.

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**Who acts:** hunger, two white men · **What happens:** carry, lift · **To what, where:** club

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 30. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (hunger, two white men), 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:pg3454:30:25
# text = He carries a club of iron, and two white men could hardly lift it.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	carries	carry	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	club	club	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	iron	iron	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
9	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	11	nummod	_	_
10	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nsubj	_	_
12	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
13	hardly	hardly	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
14	lift	lift	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **carry** | present | hunger | a club of iron |  |  |  |  | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent club=Theme |
| 2 | **lift** | could | two white men | club |  |  |  | hardly *property* | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |

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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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