---
title: They answered that they would rather stay above-ground, as there wou… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They answered that they would rather stay above-ground, as there would be no room for so many of them down in the well. Who acts: men. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 13, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/13/33/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 13, sentence 33

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They answered that they would rather stay above-ground, as there would be no room for so many of them down in the well.

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**Who acts:** men · **What happens:** answer, stay, be · **To what, where:** ground, room · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 13. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (men), 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:pg5615:13:33
# text = They answered that they would rather stay above-ground, as there would be no room for so many of them down in the well.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
5	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	rather	rather	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	stay	stay	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	ccomp	_	_
8	above	above	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
12	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
13	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	15	expl	_	_
14	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	cop	_	_
16	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	17	det	_	_
17	room	room	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
18	for	for	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	so	so	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
21	of	of	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nmod	_	_
23	down	down	ADP	RP	_	20	compound:prt	_	_
24	in	in	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
25	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	26	det	_	_
26	well	well	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | men *= man* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **stay** | would | men *= man* |  |  | ground |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme above ground=Location |
| 3 | **is a** | infinitive |  | no room |  |  |  |  | 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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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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