---
title: Why, it would take us a year, possibly our whole lives, to eat up tw… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Why, it would take us a year, possibly our whole lives, to eat up twelve oxen and twelve tons of bread.’ Who acts: it. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Flying Ship(24), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/35/103/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Yellow Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/) / [The Flying Ship(24)](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/35/) / 103

# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Flying Ship(24), sentence 103

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Why, it would take us a year, possibly our whole lives, to eat up twelve oxen and twelve tons of bread.’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** it · **What happens:** take, eat up · **To what, where:** us, twelve oxen

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Flying Ship(24). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (it), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg640:35:103
# text = Why, it would take us a year, possibly our whole lives, to eat up twelve oxen and twelve tons of bread.’
1	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	possibly	possibly	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
11	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
12	whole	whole	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	lives	life	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
17	up	up	ADP	RP	_	16	compound:prt	_	_
18	twelve	twelve	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	19	nummod	_	_
19	oxen	ox	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	obj	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
21	twelve	twelve	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	22	nummod	_	_
22	tons	ton	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	conj	_	_
23	of	of	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
24	bread	bread	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | would | it |  | us |  | year | our whole lives *obl* | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP ADVP»: agent=Instrument we=Destination |
| 2 | **eat up** | to-infinitive |  | twelve oxen and twelve tons of bread |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ox=Patient |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 102](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/35/102/)
- next →: [sentence 104](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/35/104/)
- ↑ back to [The Flying Ship(24)](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/35/)