---
title: Why, I am yellow too, and if I could only think of a way——’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Why, I am yellow too, and if I could only think of a way——’ 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 207

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Why, I am yellow too, and if I could only think of a way——’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** be, think

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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:pg540:40:207
# text = Why, I am yellow too, and if I could only think of a way——’
1	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
5	yellow	yellow	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
6	too	too	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
9	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
10	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	only	only	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	think	think	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	parataxis	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	—	-	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	—	-	PUNCT	:	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	’	'	PUNCT	NFP	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | I |  |  |  |  | yellow *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* *a condition, not said to happen* | could | I |  |  |  |  | of a way | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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