---
title: ‘No,’ they answered, ‘for we can only lay aside our swan skins for a… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘No,’ they answered, ‘for we can only lay aside our swan skins for a quarter of an hour every evening. Who acts: brothers, we. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Six Swans, 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/pg640/4/41/)

<!-- 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 Six Swans](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/4/) / 41

# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Six Swans, sentence 41

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘No,’ they answered, ‘for we can only lay aside our swan skins for a quarter of an hour every evening.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** brothers, we · **What happens:** answer, lay · **To what, where:** swan skins

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Six Swans. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (brothers, we), 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:pg640:4:41
# text = ‘No,’ they answered, ‘for we can only lay aside our swan skins for a quarter of an hour every evening.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	No	no	INTJ	UH	Polarity=Neg	6	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’	'	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
5	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
10	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	only	only	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	lay	lay	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
14	aside	aside	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
15	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
16	swan	swan	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	compound	_	_
17	skins	skin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	_
18	for	for	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	quarter	quarter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
21	of	of	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
22	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	hour	hour	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nmod	_	_
24	every	every	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	25	det	_	_
25	evening	evening	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | brothers *= brother* |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **lay** | can | we | our swan skins |  |  | evening | for a quarter of a hour; aside *property* | vn create-26.4 «NP V NP PP.beneficiary»: agent=Agent skin=Result for quarter=Beneficiary |

<!-- .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 40](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/4/40/)
- next →: [sentence 42](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/4/42/)
- ↑ back to [The Six Swans](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/4/)