---
title: It was not an easy thing, but a woman’s will can press milk out of a… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It was not an easy thing, but a woman’s will can press milk out of a stone, and her cunning will overcome heroes. Who acts: mind, cunning. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Boys With the Golden Stars, 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/pg641/35/48/)

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Boys With the Golden Stars, sentence 48

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It was not an easy thing, but a woman’s will can press milk out of a stone, and her cunning will overcome heroes.

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**Who acts:** mind, cunning · **What happens:** not be, press, overcome · **To what, where:** easy thing, milk, stone, heroes

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Boys With the Golden Stars. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mind, cunning), 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:pg641:35:48
# text = It was not an easy thing, but a woman’s will can press milk out of a stone, and her cunning will overcome heroes.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
4	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	easy	easy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’s	's	PART	POS	_	10	case	_	_
12	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
13	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	press	press	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	6	parataxis	_	_
15	milk	milk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	_
16	out	out	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
17	of	of	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	stone	stone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	25	punct	_	_
21	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	25	cc	_	_
22	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	23	nmod:poss	_	_
23	cunning	cunning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	nsubj	_	_
24	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	25	aux	_	_
25	overcome	overcome	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	conj	_	_
26	heroes	hero	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	25	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is a** | past | mind | a easy thing |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **press** | can · future |  | milk |  | a stone |  |  | vn push-12-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent milk=Theme |
| 3 | **overcome** | future | woman's cunning | heroes |  |  |  |  | vn exceed-90 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot hero=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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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