---
title: Quite easily, they were told, if they would be stablemen, otherwise… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Quite easily, they were told, if they would be stablemen, otherwise the king had no use for them. Who acts: brothers, king. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 28, 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/pg5615/28/33/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 28, sentence 33

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Quite easily, they were told, if they would be stablemen, otherwise the king had no use for them.

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**Who acts:** brothers, king · **What happens:** tell, be, have · **To what, where:** brothers, stablemen, use · **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 28. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (brothers, king), 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:pg5615:28:33
# text = Quite easily, they were told, if they would be stablemen, otherwise the king had no use for them.
1	Quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
2	easily	easily	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj:pass	_	_
5	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux:pass	_	_
6	told	tell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
10	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
11	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	cop	_	_
12	stablemen	stableman	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
14	otherwise	otherwise	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
17	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	ccomp	_	_
18	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	19	det	_	_
19	use	use	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	_
20	for	for	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past · passive |  | brothers *= brother* |  |  |  | easily *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is a** *a condition, not said to happen* | would | brothers *= brother* | stablemen |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **have** | past | the king | no use |  |  |  | for brothers *= brother*; otherwise *property* | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent use=Patient |

<!-- .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.

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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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