---
title: “Oh, don’t speak of them!” answered the young man; “I really can har… — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Oh, don’t speak of them!” answered the young man; “I really can hardly tell you. Who acts: young man. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 26, 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/pg2435/26/59/)

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 26, sentence 59

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“Oh, don’t speak of them!” answered the young man; “I really can hardly tell you.

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**Who acts:** young man · **What happens:** not speak, answer, tell · **To what, where:** you · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 26. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (young man), 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:pg2435:26:59
# text = “Oh, don’t speak of them!” answered the young man; “I really can hardly tell you.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	6	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	do	do	AUX	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
6	speak	speak	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
11	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
16	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	21	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
18	really	really	ADV	RB	_	21	advmod	_	_
19	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	21	aux	_	_
20	hardly	hardly	ADV	RB	_	21	advmod	_	_
21	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	conj	_	_
22	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	21	iobj	_	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 | **not** **speak** *speech: other* *in a quote* | infinitive · do-support |  |  |  |  |  | of pigs *= pig* | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: express* | past | the young man |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | can | the young man *= man* |  | you |  |  | hardly *property* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent you=Recipient |

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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 Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 2435 (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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