---
title: And yet they were only there to take me out of the work-box and to p… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And yet they were only there to take me out of the work-box and to put me back again!’ 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/pg640/51/48/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, A Story About a Darning-needle, sentence 48

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And yet they were only there to take me out of the work-box and to put me back again!’

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**Who acts:** Fingers · **What happens:** be, take, put back · **To what, where:** me, work box

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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:pg640:51:48
# text = And yet they were only there to take me out of the work-box and to put me back again!’
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
2	yet	yet	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
3	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
4	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
5	only	only	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	8	advmod	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	take	take	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	_
10	out	out	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
13	work	work	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	box	box	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
17	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	mark	_	_
18	put	put	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
19	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	18	obj	_	_
20	back	back	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
21	again	again	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | Fingers *= finger* |  |  |  | yet | there *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **take** | to-infinitive |  | me |  | the work box |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP PP.initial\_location»: agent=Agent i=Theme out box=Initial\_Location |
| 3 | **put back** | to-infinitive |  |  | me |  | again |  | vn invest-13.5.4-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent i=Goal |

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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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