---
title: ‘It would be easy to climb it,’ thought Jack. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘It would be easy to climb it,’ thought Jack. Who acts: easy. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Jack Sells the Cow, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, Jack Sells the Cow, sentence 17

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‘It would be easy to climb it,’ thought Jack.

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**Who acts:** easy · **What happens:** be, climb, think · **To what, where:** ladder, Jack

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Jack Sells the Cow. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (easy), 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:pg540:15:17
# text = ‘It would be easy to climb it,’ thought Jack.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	expl	_	_
3	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	cop	_	_
5	easy	easy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	nsubj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	climb	climb	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	csubj	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
11	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	Jack	Jack	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | would |  |  |  |  |  | easy *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **climb** | to-infinitive |  | ladder |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Initial\_Location it=Theme |
| 3 | **think** *speech: other* | past | easy | Jack |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot jack=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 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.

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