---
title: But to climb up there seemed impossible. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But to climb up there seemed impossible. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Branch, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Golden Branch, part 2, sentence 37

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But to climb up there seemed impossible.

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**What happens:** climb up, seem

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Branch, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg540:35:37
# text = But to climb up there seemed impossible.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	to	to	PART	TO	_	3	mark	_	_
3	climb	climb	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	advcl	_	_
4	up	up	ADP	RP	_	3	compound:prt	_	_
5	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
6	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	impossible	impossible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **climb up** | to-infinitive |  |  |  | there |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **seem** | past |  |  |  |  |  | impossible *property* | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=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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