---
title: But of what head you speak I know not.” — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But of what head you speak I know not.” Who acts: you, I. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Terrible Head, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Terrible Head, sentence 23

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But of what head you speak I know not.”

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**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** speak, not know · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Terrible Head. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, I), 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:pg503:27:23
# text = But of what head you speak I know not.”
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	of	of	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	nsubj	_	_
4	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	speak	speak	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	know	know	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
9	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* | present | you |  |  |  |  | of head | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **not** **know** | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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