---
title: ‘Carry the child about the wood; perhaps that will pacify it.’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Carry the child about the wood; perhaps that will pacify it.’ Who acts: you, that. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Birch, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/14/157/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Red Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/) / [The Wonderful Birch](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/14/) / 157

# The Red Fairy Book, The Wonderful Birch, sentence 157

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Carry the child about the wood; perhaps that will pacify it.’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you, that · **What happens:** carry, pacify · **To what, where:** child, wood

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Birch. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, that), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg540:14:157
# text = ‘Carry the child about the wood; perhaps that will pacify it.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Carry	carry	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	about	about	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	wood	wood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	perhaps	perhaps	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
10	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	12	nsubj	_	_
11	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	pacify	pacify	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
13	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **carry** | imperative | you *not said here* | the child |  |  |  | about the wood | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Theme |
| 2 | **pacify** | future | that | wood |  |  |  | perhaps *property* | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus it=Experiencer |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 156](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/14/156/)
- next →: [sentence 158](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/14/158/)
- ↑ back to [The Wonderful Birch](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/14/)