---
title: ‘How did you manage it? we never saw you.’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘How did you manage it? we never saw you.’ Who acts: you, we. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, sentence 118

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‘How did you manage it? we never saw you.’

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**Who acts:** you, we · **What happens:** manage, not see · **To what, where:** behind, you

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Dancing Princesses. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, we), 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:pg540:2:118
# text = ‘How did you manage it? we never saw you.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
3	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	manage	manage	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
8	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
10	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	parataxis	_	_
11	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **manage** | past · do-support | you | behind |  |  |  |  | vn caring-75.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **see** | past | we | you |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer you=Stimulus |

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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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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