---
title: 'Excuse my speaking to you, but I cannot help admiring those shoes o… — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'Excuse my speaking to you, but I cannot help admiring those shoes of yours. Who acts: you, I, my. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 17, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 17, sentence 101

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'Excuse my speaking to you, but I cannot help admiring those shoes of yours.

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**Who acts:** you, I, my · **What happens:** excuse, not help, admire, speak · **To what, where:** speaking, you, shoes · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, I, my), 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:pg3027:17:101
# text = 'Excuse my speaking to you, but I cannot help admiring those shoes of yours.
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Excuse	excuse	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	speaking	speaking	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
10	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	12	advmod	_	_
12	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
13	admiring	admire	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	12	xcomp	_	_
14	those	that	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	15	det	_	_
15	shoes	shoe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	_
16	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	yours	your	PRON	PRP	Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **excuse** | imperative | you *not said here* | my speaking | you |  |  |  | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent speaking=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **help** | can | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 3 | **admire** *not said to happen* | gerund | I *not said here* | that shoes of yours |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer shoe=Stimulus |
| 4 | **speak** |  | my |  |  |  |  |  | nom speaking «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

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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 Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (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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