---
title: How can you be so silly as to think of such a thing?” — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: How can you be so silly as to think of such a thing?” Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Yellow Dwarf, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Yellow Dwarf, part 1, sentence 88

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How can you be so silly as to think of such a thing?”

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** be, think

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Yellow Dwarf, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg503:5:88
# text = How can you be so silly as to think of such a thing?”
1	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
2	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	cop	_	_
5	so	so	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	silly	silly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
7	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	think	think	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	advcl	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
11	such	such	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	13	det:predet	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | can | you |  |  |  |  | silly *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* | to-infinitive | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  | of such thing | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=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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