---
title: ‘I little thought it would come to this, that I should die of hunger.’ — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I little thought it would come to this, that I should die of hunger.’ Who acts: I, death. 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/pg640/33/158/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Magic Ring, sentence 158

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‘I little thought it would come to this, that I should die of hunger.’

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**Who acts:** I, death · **What happens:** think, come, die · **To what, where:** this · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (I, death), 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:pg640:33:158
# text = ‘I little thought it would come to this, that I should die of hunger.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	little	little	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	4	advmod	_	_
4	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	ccomp	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
12	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
13	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	die	die	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	conj	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	hunger	hunger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **think** *speech: other* | past | I |  |  |  |  | little *property* | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **come** | would | death |  |  | this |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to this=Initial\_Location |
| 3 | **die** | should | I |  |  |  |  | of hunger | vn die-42.4-1 «NP V PP.cause»: agent=Patient of hunger=Causer |

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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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