---
title: ‘Why should I not speak as well as you? — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Why should I not speak as well as you? Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Branch, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/36/56/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Red Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/) / [The Golden Branch, part 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/36/) / 56

# The Red Fairy Book, The Golden Branch, part 3, sentence 56

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Why should I not speak as well as you?

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** not speak · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Branch, 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 (I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg540:36:56
# text = ‘Why should I not speak as well as you?
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
3	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
6	speak	speak	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	as	as	ADV	RB	ExtPos=CCONJ	10	cc	_	_
8	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	7	fixed	_	_
9	as	as	ADP	IN	_	7	fixed	_	_
10	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **speak** *speech: other* | should | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 55](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/36/55/)
- next →: [sentence 57](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/36/57/)
- ↑ back to [The Golden Branch, part 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/36/)