---
title: “I cannot believe that he meant to deceive us. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “I cannot believe that he meant to deceive us. Who acts: Beauty, elephant. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Beauty and the Beast, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Beauty and the Beast, part 2, sentence 42

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“I cannot believe that he meant to deceive us.

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**Who acts:** Beauty, elephant · **What happens:** not believe, mean, deceive · **To what, where:** us

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Beauty and the Beast, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Beauty, elephant), 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:pg503:15:42
# text = “I cannot believe that he meant to deceive us.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	believe	believe	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	meant	mean	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	deceive	deceive	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	xcomp	_	_
11	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **believe** *in a quote* | can | Beauty |  |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V that S»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **mean** *in a quote* | past | elephant |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **deceive** *not said to happen, in a quote* | to-infinitive | elephant *not said here* | us |  |  |  |  | vn trick-59.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent we=Patient |

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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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