---
title: ‘Well, that will not be a very hard thing to do,’ thought the youth. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Well, that will not be a very hard thing to do,’ thought the youth. Who acts: that, hard thing. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Master Thief, sentence 52

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‘Well, that will not be a very hard thing to do,’ thought the youth.

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**Who acts:** that, hard thing · **What happens:** not be, do, ', think · **To what, where:** hard thing, youth

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (that, hard thing), 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:pg540:9:52
# text = ‘Well, that will not be a very hard thing to do,’ thought the youth.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Well	well	INTJ	UH	_	11	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	11	nsubj	_	_
5	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
6	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
7	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	cop	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
9	very	very	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	acl:relcl	_	_
16	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	youth	youth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	16	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is a** | future | that | a hard thing |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **do** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **'** | infinitive | a hard thing *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **think** *speech: other* | past | a hard thing | the youth |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot youth=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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