---
title: Drakestail said to himself: ‘We can’t be too many friends.’... — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Drakestail said to himself: ‘We can’t be too many friends.’... Who acts: Drakestail, We. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Kari Woodengown, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, Kari Woodengown, part 3, sentence 25

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Drakestail said to himself: ‘We can’t be too many friends.’...

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**Who acts:** Drakestail, We · **What happens:** say, not be · **To what, where:** Drakestail, many friends · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Kari Woodengown, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Drakestail, 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:pg540:31:25
# text = Drakestail said to himself: ‘We can’t be too many friends.’...
1	Drakestail	Drakestail	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	_
6	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
8	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
10	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	cop	_	_
11	too	too	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	friends	friend	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	...	...	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Drakestail |  | Drakestail |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to himself=Recipient |
| 2 | **not** **is a** | can | We | many friends |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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