---
title: ‘How is it, good mother, that you are so much harder to pull up than… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘How is it, good mother, that you are so much harder to pull up than the young Prince? Who acts: course, you. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Brothers, 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/pg540/41/143/)

<!-- 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 Twelve Brothers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/41/) / 143

# The Red Fairy Book, The Twelve Brothers, sentence 143

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘How is it, good mother, that you are so much harder to pull up than the young Prince?

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** course, you · **What happens:** be, pull up · **To what, where:** good mother

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Brothers. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (course, you), 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:pg540:41:143
# text = ‘How is it, good mother, that you are so much harder to pull up than the young Prince?
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
9	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
10	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
11	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
12	so	so	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	much	much	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
14	harder	hard	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	7	parataxis	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	pull	pull	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	xcomp	_	_
17	up	up	ADP	RP	_	16	compound:prt	_	_
18	than	than	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
20	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	Prince	Prince	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | course | good mother |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | present | you |  |  |  |  | hard *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **pull up** | to-infinitive | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  | than the young Prince | vn slide-11.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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 142](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/41/142/)
- next →: [sentence 144](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/41/144/)
- ↑ back to [The Twelve Brothers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/41/)