---
title: ‘No; I don’t mean to be a beast of burden any longer.’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘No; I don’t mean to be a beast of burden any longer.’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Canary, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Enchanted Canary, sentence 188

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‘No; I don’t mean to be a beast of burden any longer.’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** not mean, be · **To what, where:** beast

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Canary. 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.

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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:pg540:40:188
# text = ‘No; I don’t mean to be a beast of burden any longer.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	No	no	INTJ	UH	Polarity=Neg	7	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
5	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
7	mean	mean	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
9	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	cop	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	beast	beast	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	xcomp	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	burden	burden	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
14	any	any	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	longer	long	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **mean** | present · do-support | I |  |  |  |  | long *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | a beast |  |  |  | of burden | 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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