---
title: ‘But I dare not go to the Governor and say this. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘But I dare not go to the Governor and say this. Who acts: I. 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 99

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‘But I dare not go to the Governor and say this.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** not go, say · **To what, where:** Governor, this · **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 (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:pg540:9:99
# text = ‘But I dare not go to the Governor and say this.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
4	dare	dare	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
6	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	Governor	Governor	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
12	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **go** | dare | I |  |  | the Governor |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to governor=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | infinitive | I *not said here* | this |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent this=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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