---
title: ‘Oh! isn’t there a quicker way of knowing than that?’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Oh! isn’t there a quicker way of knowing than that?’ Who acts: quicker way. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Graciosa and Percinet, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, Graciosa and Percinet, part 2, sentence 38

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‘Oh! isn’t there a quicker way of knowing than that?’

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**Who acts:** quicker way · **What happens:** be, know · **To what, where:** quicker way

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Graciosa and Percinet, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (quicker way), 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:pg540:24:38
# text = ‘Oh! isn’t there a quicker way of knowing than that?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	9	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
4	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
6	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	9	advmod	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	quicker	quick	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	9	amod	_	_
9	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	knowing	know	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	acl	_	_
12	than	than	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | a quicker way |  | there |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **know** | gerund | a quicker way *not said here* |  |  |  |  | than a quicker way | 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 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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- ← previous: [sentence 37](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/24/37/)
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