---
title: “No,” he replied, “it’s quite hopeless; if someone could only tell m… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “No,” he replied, “it’s quite hopeless; if someone could only tell me how to!” Who acts: King, shuddering, someone. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, sentence 121

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“No,” he replied, “it’s quite hopeless; if someone could only tell me how to!”

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**Who acts:** King, shuddering, someone · **What happens:** reply, be, tell · **To what, where:** King · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (King, shuddering, someone), 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:pg503:13:121
# text = “No,” he replied, “it’s quite hopeless; if someone could only tell me how to!”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	No	no	INTJ	UH	Polarity=Neg	6	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’s	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
11	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	hopeless	hopeless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	18	punct	_	_
14	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
15	someone	someone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	18	nsubj	_	_
16	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
17	only	only	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	conj	_	_
19	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	18	iobj	_	_
20	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	21	advmod	_	_
21	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reply** *speech: express* | past | King |  |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** *in a quote* | present | shuddering |  |  |  |  | hopeless *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* *a condition, not said to happen, in a quote* | could | someone |  | King |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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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