---
title: I hurt it when I was trying to root up an oak-tree.’ — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: I hurt it when I was trying to root up an oak-tree.’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Beasts(11), part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Grateful Beasts(11), part 2, sentence 61

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I hurt it when I was trying to root up an oak-tree.’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** hurt, try, root up · **To what, where:** foot, oak tree

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Beasts(11), part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg640:15:61
# text = I hurt it when I was trying to root up an oak-tree.’
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	hurt	hurt	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	_
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	trying	try	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	advcl	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	root	root	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	xcomp	_	_
10	up	up	ADP	RP	_	9	compound:prt	_	_
11	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
12	oak	oak	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hurt** | past | I | foot |  |  |  |  | vn hurt-40.8.3-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer it=Patient |
| 2 | **try** | past · progressive | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **root up** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | a oak tree |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent tree=Patient |

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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 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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