---
title: But how can I help it?” — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz · tree and pragmatics
description: But how can I help it?” Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter VI. The Cowardly Lion, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapter VI. The Cowardly Lion, sentence 24

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But how can I help it?”

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** help · **To what, where:** head

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This is a sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter VI. The Cowardly Lion. 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:pg55:8:24
# text = But how can I help it?”
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **help** | can | I | head |  |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Beneficiary |

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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 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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