---
title: Would not the good spirits tell him? — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Would not the good spirits tell him? Who acts: good spirits. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 7, 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/pg3282/7/101/)

<!-- 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/) / [The Brown Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/) / [The Brown Fairy Book, part 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/7/) / 101

# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 7, sentence 101

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Would not the good spirits tell him?

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** good spirits · **What happens:** not tell · **To what, where:** Carrier · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (good spirits), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg3282:7:101
# text = Would not the good spirits tell him?
1	Would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
2	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	spirits	spirit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
6	tell	tell	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **tell** *speech: assert* | would | the good spirits |  | Carrier |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent he=Recipient |

<!-- .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:** «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 100](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/7/100/)
- next →: [sentence 102](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/7/102/)
- ↑ back to [The Brown Fairy Book, part 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/7/)