---
title: “I will go borrow a measure of someone, while you dig the hole.” — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “I will go borrow a measure of someone, while you dig the hole.” Who acts: wife, you. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Forty Thieves, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Forty Thieves, sentence 24

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“I will go borrow a measure of someone, while you dig the hole.”

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**Who acts:** wife, you · **What happens:** go, borrow, dig, measure · **To what, where:** measure, hole, someone

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Forty Thieves. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wife, you), 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:pg503:34:24
# text = “I will go borrow a measure of someone, while you dig the hole.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	borrow	borrow	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	measure	measure	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	someone	someone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	7	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	while	while	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
12	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	dig	dig	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	hole	hole	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** *in a quote* | future | Ali's wife *= wife* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **borrow** *in a quote* | infinitive | Ali's wife *= wife* *not said here* | a measure of someone |  |  |  |  | vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent measure=Theme |
| 3 | **dig** *in a quote* | present | you | the hole |  |  |  |  | vn poke-19-1-1-1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent hole=Theme |
| 4 | **measure** *in a quote* |  |  | someone |  |  |  |  | nom measure «act transitive»: of=patient |

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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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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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