---
title: ‘You know what price my father has promised to pay for our secret?’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘You know what price my father has promised to pay for our secret?’ Who acts: You, father. 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 128

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‘You know what price my father has promised to pay for our secret?’

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**Who acts:** You, father · **What happens:** know, price, promise, pay · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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, father), 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:pg540:2:128
# text = ‘You know what price my father has promised to pay for our secret?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	know	know	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	5	nsubj	_	_
5	price	price	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	ccomp	_	_
6	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
8	has	have	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	promised	promise	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	3	ccomp	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	pay	pay	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	_
12	for	for	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	secret	secret	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** | present | You |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **price** |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **promise** *speech: promise* | present · perfect | my father |  |  |  |  |  | vn promise-37.13 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **pay** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | my father *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for our secret | vn pay-68-1 «NP V NP PP.theme»: agent=Agent for secret=Theme |

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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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