---
title: ‘We can get it easier than that!’ said the troll. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘We can get it easier than that!’ said the troll. Who acts: We. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 16, 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/pg5615/16/99/)

<!-- 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 Pink Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/) / [The Pink Fairy Book, part 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/16/) / 99

# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 16, sentence 99

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘We can get it easier than that!’ said the troll.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** We · **What happens:** get, say · **To what, where:** broth, troll · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We), 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:pg5615:16:99
# text = ‘We can get it easier than that!’ said the troll.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	_
6	easier	easy	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	4	xcomp	_	_
7	than	than	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	troll	troll	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **get** | can | We | broth |  |  |  | easy *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer it=Stimulus |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the troll |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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 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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 98](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/16/98/)
- next →: [sentence 100](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/16/100/)
- ↑ back to [The Pink Fairy Book, part 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/16/)