---
title: But they did not yet know it by heart; it was much too difficult. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But they did not yet know it by heart; it was much too difficult. Who acts: people. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nightingale, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Nightingale, sentence 117

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But they did not yet know it by heart; it was much too difficult.

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**Who acts:** people · **What happens:** not know, be · **To what, where:** piece

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nightingale. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (people), 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:pg640:48:117
# text = But they did not yet know it by heart; it was much too difficult.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
5	yet	yet	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	_
8	by	by	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	heart	heart	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	expl	_	_
12	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
13	much	much	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
14	too	too	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	difficult	difficult	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **know** | past · do-support | people | piece |  |  | yet | by heart | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer it=Stimulus |
| 2 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | difficult *property* | tree rules |

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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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