---
title: But although he tried with all his might, he couldn’t cut off the sm… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But although he tried with all his might, he couldn’t cut off the smallest piece. Who acts: lad. 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 84

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But although he tried with all his might, he couldn’t cut off the smallest piece.

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**Who acts:** lad · **What happens:** try, not cut off · **To what, where:** smallest piece

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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 (lad), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg640:1030`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg640:15:84
# text = But although he tried with all his might, he couldn’t cut off the smallest piece.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
2	although	although	SCONJ	IN	_	4	mark	_	_
3	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	advcl	_	_
5	with	with	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	8	det:predet	_	_
7	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	might	might	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	cut	cut	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
14	off	off	ADP	RP	_	13	compound:prt	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
16	smallest	small	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	17	amod	_	_
17	piece	piece	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | past | lad |  |  |  |  | with lad's might | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **not** **cut off** | could | lad | the smallest piece |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Affector piece=Eventuality |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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