---
title: “If it required brains to figure it out, I never should have said it.” — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz · tree and pragmatics
description: “If it required brains to figure it out, I never should have said it.” Who acts: daylight, Dorothy. A sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter IV. The Road Through the Forest, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapter IV. The Road Through the Forest, sentence 70

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“If it required brains to figure it out, I never should have said it.”

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**Who acts:** daylight, Dorothy · **What happens:** require, figure out, not say · **To what, where:** brains, daylight · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter IV. The Road Through the Forest. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (daylight, Dorothy), 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:pg55:6:70
# text = “If it required brains to figure it out, I never should have said it.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	4	mark	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	required	require	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	advcl	_	_
5	brains	brain	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	figure	figure	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	out	out	ADP	RP	_	7	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
11	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
12	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	15	advmod	_	_
13	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
14	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	aux	_	_
15	said	say	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
16	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **require** *a condition, not said to happen, in a quote* | past | daylight | brains |  |  |  |  | vn order-58.3-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent brain=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **figure out** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | daylight *not said here* | daylight |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Topic |
| 3 | **not** **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | should · perfect | Dorothy | daylight |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent it=Topic |

<!-- .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 Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Project Gutenberg book 55 (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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