---
title: ‘A pretty joke, indeed; just as if I should dirty my hands for you!’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘A pretty joke, indeed; just as if I should dirty my hands for you!’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Mother Holle, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, Mother Holle, part 1, sentence 40

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‘A pretty joke, indeed; just as if I should dirty my hands for you!’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** dirty · **To what, where:** hands

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Mother Holle, part 1. 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:pg540:44:40
# text = ‘A pretty joke, indeed; just as if I should dirty my hands for you!’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	pretty	pretty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	joke	joke	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	indeed	indeed	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	_
8	just	just	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
9	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
10	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	9	fixed	_	_
11	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	dirty	dirty	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	parataxis	_	_
14	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	hands	hand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	_
16	for	for	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **dirty** | should | I | my hands |  |  |  | for you | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent hand=Patient |

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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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