---
title: How can I explain to you the cause of my hesitation? — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: How can I explain to you the cause of my hesitation? Who acts: I, my. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Felicia and the Pot of Pinks, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Felicia and the Pot of Pinks, sentence 116

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How can I explain to you the cause of my hesitation?

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**Who acts:** I, my · **What happens:** explain, cause, hesitate · **To what, where:** cause, you, hesitation

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Felicia and the Pot of Pinks. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, my), 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:pg503:22:116
# text = How can I explain to you the cause of my hesitation?
1	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	4	advmod	_	_
2	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	explain	explain	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	obl	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	cause	cause	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	hesitation	hesitation	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **explain** *speech: assert* | can | I | the cause of my hesitation | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent cause=Topic to you=Recipient |
| 2 | **cause** |  |  | my hesitation |  |  |  |  | nom cause «event transitive»: of=patient |
| 3 | **hesitate** |  | my |  |  |  |  |  | nom hesitation «cognition intransitive»: poss=agent |

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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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