---
title: I shall pick my steps carefully, for fear of treading upon some fift… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: I shall pick my steps carefully, for fear of treading upon some fifty of you, without knowing it. Who acts: I, fear, my. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pygmies., part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/9/77/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Tanglewood Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/) / [The Pygmies., part 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/9/) / 77

# Tanglewood Tales, The Pygmies., part 3, sentence 77

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
I shall pick my steps carefully, for fear of treading upon some fifty of you, without knowing it.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** I, fear, my · **What happens:** pick, tread, know, step · **To what, where:** steps, fifty, fear

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pygmies., part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, fear, my), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg976:675`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg976:9:77
# text = I shall pick my steps carefully, for fear of treading upon some fifty of you, without knowing it.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	pick	pick	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	steps	step	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
6	carefully	carefully	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	for	for	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	fear	fear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
10	of	of	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
11	treading	tread	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	acl	_	_
12	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	14	advmod	_	_
14	fifty	fifty	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	11	obl	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	14	nmod	_	_
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
18	without	without	SCONJ	IN	_	19	mark	_	_
19	knowing	know	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	advcl	_	_
20	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	obj	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pick** | shall | I | my steps |  |  |  | for fear; carefully *property* | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP PP.beneficiary»: agent=Agent step=Theme for fear=Beneficiary |
| 2 | **tread** | gerund | fear *not said here* |  |  | fifty of you |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme upon fifty=Trajectory |
| 3 | **know** | gerund | I *not said here* | fear |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer it=Stimulus |
| 4 | **step** |  | my |  |  |  |  |  | nom step «act transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Project Gutenberg book 976 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 76](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/9/76/)
- next →: [sentence 78](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/9/78/)
- ↑ back to [The Pygmies., part 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/9/)