---
title: You had better leave it alone; you know nothing about it.’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: You had better leave it alone; you know nothing about it.’ Who acts: You. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Goose, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Golden Goose, sentence 14

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You had better leave it alone; you know nothing about it.’

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**Who acts:** You · **What happens:** have, leave, know · **To what, where:** leg, nothing

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Goose. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (You), 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:pg540:48:14
# text = You had better leave it alone; you know nothing about it.’
1	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	2	xcomp	_	_
4	leave	leave	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	_
6	alone	alone	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	9	punct	_	_
8	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	know	know	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
10	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	9	obj	_	_
11	about	about	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | You |  |  |  |  | good *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **leave** | infinitive | You *not said here* | leg |  |  |  | alone *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 3 | **know** | present | you | nothing |  |  |  | about leg | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer nothing=Stimulus |

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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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