---
title: They pursued him as fast as they could, but they found it impossible… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They pursued him as fast as they could, but they found it impossible to overtake him, and he reached home in safety. Who acts: beasts, horse. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Donkey Cabbage, part 4, 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/pg640/13/21/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Donkey Cabbage, part 4, sentence 21

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They pursued him as fast as they could, but they found it impossible to overtake him, and he reached home in safety.

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**Who acts:** beasts, horse · **What happens:** pursue, find, overtake, reach · **To what, where:** horse, castle, safety · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Donkey Cabbage, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (beasts, horse), 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:pg640:13:21
# text = They pursued him as fast as they could, but they found it impossible to overtake him, and he reached home in safety.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	pursued	pursue	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	as	as	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	fast	fast	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	2	advmod	_	_
6	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
7	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	found	find	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
13	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	_
14	impossible	impossible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	xcomp	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	overtake	overtake	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	csubj	_	_
17	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
20	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
21	reached	reach	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
22	home	home	ADV	RB	_	21	advmod	_	_
23	in	in	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
24	safety	safety	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pursue** | past | beasts *= beast* | horse |  |  |  | fast *property* | vn chase-51.6 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Theme |
| 2 | **find** | past | beasts *= beast* | castle |  |  |  | impossible *property* | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Topic |
| 3 | **overtake** | to-infinitive |  | horse |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **reach** | past | horse |  |  | safety |  | home *property* | vn body\_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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