---
title: ‘Who should know better than I?’ said the beast, and his eyes sparkl… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Who should know better than I?’ said the beast, and his eyes sparkled. Who acts: eyes. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 10, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/10/38/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 10, sentence 38

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‘Who should know better than I?’ said the beast, and his eyes sparkled.

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**Who acts:** eyes · **What happens:** know, say, sparkle · **To what, where:** beast · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 10. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (eyes), 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:pg5615:10:38
# text = ‘Who should know better than I?’ said the beast, and his eyes sparkled.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	4	nsubj	_	_
3	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
5	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	4	advmod	_	_
6	than	than	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	beast	beast	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
15	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	nsubj	_	_
17	sparkled	sparkle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** | should |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the beast |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **sparkle** | past | Spitzbergen's eyes |  |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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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