---
title: “How can I go to the King,” said the gardener, “a poor wretch like m… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “How can I go to the King,” said the gardener, “a poor wretch like me?” Who acts: gardener. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Bronze Ring, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Bronze Ring, sentence 10

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“How can I go to the King,” said the gardener, “a poor wretch like me?”

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**Who acts:** gardener · **What happens:** go, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Bronze Ring. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (gardener), 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:pg503:2:10
# text = “How can I go to the King,” said the gardener, “a poor wretch like me?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	King	King	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	gardener	gardener	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
15	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
17	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	wretch	wretch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	appos	_	_
19	like	like	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	18	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	18	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** *in a quote* | can | the gardener *= gardener* |  |  |  |  | to the King | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to king=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the gardener |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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