---
title: He answered, ‘Two miles from this place sits a fly on a branch of an… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He answered, ‘Two miles from this place sits a fly on a branch of an oak; I want to shoot out its left eye.’ Who acts: master, Two miles, I. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How Six Men Travelled Through the Wide World, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of ever
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/19/9/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, How Six Men Travelled Through the Wide World, part 1, sentence 9

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He answered, ‘Two miles from this place sits a fly on a branch of an oak; I want to shoot out its left eye.’

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**Who acts:** master, Two miles, I · **What happens:** answer, sit, want, shoot out · **To what, where:** fly, branch, left eye · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How Six Men Travelled Through the Wide World, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (master, Two miles, 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:pg640:19:9
# text = He answered, ‘Two miles from this place sits a fly on a branch of an oak; I want to shoot out its left eye.’
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
4	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	Two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	6	nummod	_	_
6	miles	mile	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
7	from	from	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	9	det	_	_
9	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
10	sits	sit	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	ccomp	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	fly	fly	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	on	on	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	branch	branch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	_
16	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	oak	oak	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	21	punct	_	_
20	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
21	want	want	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	conj	_	_
22	to	to	PART	TO	_	23	mark	_	_
23	shoot	shoot	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	21	xcomp	_	_
24	out	out	ADP	RP	_	23	compound:prt	_	_
25	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	27	nmod:poss	_	_
26	left	left	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	amod	_	_
27	eye	eye	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
29	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | master |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **sit** | present | Two miles from this place | a fly |  | a branch of a oak |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V NP.theme PP»: agent=Agent fly=Theme on branch=Location |
| 3 | **want** | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 4 | **shoot out** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | oak's left eye |  |  |  |  | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent eye=Theme |

<!-- .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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