---
title: ‘Just do what you think best, father,’ said his wife. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Just do what you think best, father,’ said his wife. Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Master Thief, sentence 237

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‘Just do what you think best, father,’ said his wife.

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** think, say · **To what, where:** wife · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief. 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:pg540:9:237
# text = ‘Just do what you think best, father,’ said his wife.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Just	just	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
3	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	12	nsubj:outer	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	think	think	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	acl:relcl	_	_
7	best	good	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	6	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **think** *speech: other* | present | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | Governor's wife |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent wife=Topic |

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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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