---
title: It would have been better for us this day if you had. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It would have been better for us this day if you had. Who acts: rank, you. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Ring, 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/pg640/33/120/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Magic Ring, sentence 120

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It would have been better for us this day if you had.

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**Who acts:** rank, you · **What happens:** be, have

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Ring. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (rank, you), 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:pg640:33:120
# text = It would have been better for us this day if you had.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
3	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	aux	_	_
4	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	5	cop	_	_
5	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
6	for	for	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	obl	_	_
8	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	9	det	_	_
9	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:unmarked	_	_
10	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
11	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | would · perfect | rank |  |  |  | day | for us; good *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** *a condition, not said to happen* | past | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |

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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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