---
title: ‘Well, we must begin by digging a hole.’ — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Well, we must begin by digging a hole.’ Who acts: we. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 35, 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/pg5615/35/69/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 35, sentence 69

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‘Well, we must begin by digging a hole.’

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**Who acts:** we · **What happens:** begin, dig · **To what, where:** hole

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 35. 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.

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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:pg5615:35:69
# text = ‘Well, we must begin by digging a hole.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Well	well	INTJ	UH	_	6	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	begin	begin	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	by	by	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
8	digging	dig	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	hole	hole	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | must | we |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |
| 2 | **dig** | gerund | we *not said here* | a hole |  |  |  |  | vn poke-19-1-1-1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent hole=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 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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