---
title: Why, your little feet would take an hour to go the distance an ordin… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Why, your little feet would take an hour to go the distance an ordinary person could do in a minute!’ Who acts: little feet, ordinary person. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Hazel-nut Child (29), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Hazel-nut Child (29), sentence 12

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Why, your little feet would take an hour to go the distance an ordinary person could do in a minute!’

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**Who acts:** little feet, ordinary person · **What happens:** take, go, do · **To what, where:** distance

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Hazel-nut Child (29). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (little feet, ordinary person), 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:pg640:40:12
# text = Why, your little feet would take an hour to go the distance an ordinary person could do in a minute!’
1	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
3	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
4	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	feet	foot	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
6	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	hour	hour	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	advcl	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	distance	distance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
14	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	ordinary	ordinary	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
17	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
18	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	acl:relcl	_	_
19	in	in	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	minute	minute	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | would | your little feet |  |  |  | hour |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **go** | to-infinitive | your little feet *not said here* | the distance |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **do** | could | a ordinary person | the distance *not said here* |  |  | minute |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent distance=Eventuality |

<!-- .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.

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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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