---
title: It would take us a year, possibly our whole lives, to drink so much.’ — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It would take us a year, possibly our whole lives, to drink so much.’ 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.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Flying Ship(24), sentence 113

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It would take us a year, possibly our whole lives, to drink so much.’

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**Who acts:** It · **What happens:** take, drink · **To what, where:** us

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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.

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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:pg640:35:113
# text = It would take us a year, possibly our whole lives, to drink so much.’
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	possibly	possibly	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
9	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
10	whole	whole	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	lives	life	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
14	drink	drink	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
15	so	so	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
16	much	much	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | 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 | **drink** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: 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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