---
title: ‘My dear friend, how beautifully you play the fiddle; I would like t… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘My dear friend, how beautifully you play the fiddle; I would like to learn how you do it.’ Who acts: you, dear friend. 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 28

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‘My dear friend, how beautifully you play the fiddle; I would like to learn how you do it.’

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**Who acts:** you, dear friend · **What happens:** play, like, learn, do · **To what, where:** fiddle · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (you, dear friend), 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:pg540:50:28
# text = ‘My dear friend, how beautifully you play the fiddle; I would like to learn how you do it.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	My	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
3	dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	friend	friend	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
6	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	_
7	beautifully	beautifully	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
8	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	play	play	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	acl:relcl	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	fiddle	fiddle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
13	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
14	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	like	like	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	learn	learn	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	xcomp	_	_
18	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	20	advmod	_	_
19	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
20	do	do	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	ccomp	_	_
21	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **play** | present | you | the fiddle |  |  |  | beautifully *property* | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fiddle=Theme |
| 2 | **like** | would | My dear friend |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 3 | **learn** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | My dear friend *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V what S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **do** | present | you | fiddle |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality |

<!-- .note -->
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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