---
title: It was not at all easy to fill the milk-can, which was large and rou… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It was not at all easy to fill the milk-can, which was large and round. Who acts: It. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Canary, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Enchanted Canary, sentence 196

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It was not at all easy to fill the milk-can, which was large and round.

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**Who acts:** It · **What happens:** not be, fill, be

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Canary. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (It), 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:pg540:40:196
# text = It was not at all easy to fill the milk-can, which was large and round.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
4	at	at	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	6	advmod	_	_
6	easy	easy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	fill	fill	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	csubj	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
10	milk	milk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	16	nsubj	_	_
15	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
16	large	large	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	conj	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
18	round	round	ADV	RB	_	16	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** | past | It |  |  |  |  | easy *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **fill** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | large *property* | tree rules |

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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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