---
title: ‘Take great care to hold me tight!’ said the Darning-needle to the F… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Take great care to hold me tight!’ said the Darning-needle to the Fingers who were holding her. Who acts: Fingers. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Story About a Darning-needle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/51/2/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, A Story About a Darning-needle, sentence 2

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‘Take great care to hold me tight!’ said the Darning-needle to the Fingers who were holding her.

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**Who acts:** Fingers · **What happens:** take, hold, say · **To what, where:** great care, me, Darning needle, needle · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Story About a Darning-needle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Fingers), 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:pg640:51:2
# text = ‘Take great care to hold me tight!’ said the Darning-needle to the Fingers who were holding her.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
3	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	care	care	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	hold	hold	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	advcl	_	_
7	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	_
8	tight	tight	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
13	Darning	darning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	needle	needle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
16	to	to	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	Fingers	finger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	nmod	_	_
19	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	21	nsubj	_	_
20	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	aux	_	_
21	holding	hold	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	18	acl:relcl	_	_
22	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | infinitive |  | great care |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent care=Theme |
| 2 | **hold** | to-infinitive |  | me |  |  |  | tight *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Theme |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the Darning needle |  |  |  | to the Fingers | tree rules |
| 4 | **hold** | past · progressive | the Fingers | needle |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent she=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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