---
title: I should have sold the dog just the same whatever you had told me. — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: I should have sold the dog just the same whatever you had told me. Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 39, 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/pg3027/39/26/)

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 39, sentence 26

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I should have sold the dog just the same whatever you had told me.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** sell, tell · **To what, where:** dog, you, me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 39. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg3027:39:26
# text = I should have sold the dog just the same whatever you had told me.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	aux	_	_
4	sold	sell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	just	just	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	same	same	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	advcl	_	_
10	whatever	whatever	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	13	obj	_	_
11	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj:pass	_	_
12	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	told	tell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	parataxis	_	_
14	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sell** | should · perfect | I | the dog |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dog=Theme |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past · perfect · passive |  | you | me |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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