---
title: It looked clumsy, but the Tin Woodman was sure it was strong and wou… — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz · tree and pragmatics
description: It looked clumsy, but the Tin Woodman was sure it was strong and would answer their purpose. Who acts: ladder, Tin Woodman, brains. A sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter XX. The Dainty China Country, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapter XX. The Dainty China Country, sentence 8

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It looked clumsy, but the Tin Woodman was sure it was strong and would answer their purpose.

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**Who acts:** ladder, Tin Woodman, brains · **What happens:** look, be, answer, purpose · **To what, where:** purpose

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This is a sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter XX. The Dainty China Country. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (ladder, Tin Woodman, brains), 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:pg55:22:8
# text = It looked clumsy, but the Tin Woodman was sure it was strong and would answer their purpose.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	clumsy	clumsy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
5	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	Tin	Tin	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	_
8	Woodman	Woodman	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	sure	sure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	parataxis	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
13	strong	strong	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	ccomp	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
15	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
16	answer	answer	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	conj	_	_
17	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	purpose	purpose	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **look** | past | ladder |  |  |  |  | clumsy *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **is** | past | the Tin Woodman |  |  |  |  | sure *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **is** | past | ladder |  |  |  |  | strong *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **answer** *speech: assert* | would | the Tin Woodman *not said here* | brains's purpose |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent purpose=Eventuality |
| 5 | **purpose** |  | brains *= brain* |  |  |  |  |  | nom purpose «cognition intransitive»: poss=agent |

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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 Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Project Gutenberg book 55 (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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