---
title: ‘A fox; well, I haven’t the smallest desire for his company.’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘A fox; well, I haven’t the smallest desire for his company.’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Marvellous Musician, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Marvellous Musician, sentence 26

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‘A fox; well, I haven’t the smallest desire for his company.’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** have · **To what, where:** smallest desire

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Marvellous Musician. 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:pg540:50:26
# text = ‘A fox; well, I haven’t the smallest desire for his company.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	fox	fox	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
5	well	well	INTJ	UH	_	8	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
7	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	12	advmod	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	smallest	small	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	12	amod	_	_
12	desire	desire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
13	for	for	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	company	company	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | present | I | the smallest desire |  |  |  | for fox's company | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent desire=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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