---
title: None of his friends came to visit him there, for there were too many… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: None of his friends came to visit him there, for there were too many stairs to climb. Who acts: None, many stairs. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tinder-box, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Tinder-box, sentence 82

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None of his friends came to visit him there, for there were too many stairs to climb.

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**Who acts:** None, many stairs · **What happens:** come, visit, be, climb · **To what, where:** soldier

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tinder-box. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (None, many stairs), 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:pg640:46:82
# text = None of his friends came to visit him there, for there were too many stairs to climb.
1	None	none	PRON	NN	PronType=Neg	5	nsubj	_	_
2	of	of	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	friends	friend	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	nmod	_	_
5	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	visit	visit	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
12	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	13	expl	_	_
13	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
14	too	too	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	stairs	stair	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	_
17	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	mark	_	_
18	climb	climb	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | None |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **visit** | to-infinitive | None *not said here* | soldier |  | there |  |  | vn meet-36.3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Co-Agent |
| 3 | **be** | past | many stairs |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **climb** | to-infinitive | many stairs *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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