---
title: ‘No, I don’t know a single letter,’ said the boy. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘No, I don’t know a single letter,’ said the boy. Who acts: I, boy. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 24, 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/pg5615/24/22/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 24, sentence 22

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‘No, I don’t know a single letter,’ said the boy.

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**Who acts:** I, boy · **What happens:** not know, say · **To what, where:** single letter · **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 24. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, boy), 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:pg5615:24:22
# text = ‘No, I don’t know a single letter,’ said the boy.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	No	no	INTJ	UH	Polarity=Neg	7	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
5	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
7	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	ccomp	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	single	single	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	letter	letter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **know** | present · do-support | I | a single letter |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer letter=Stimulus |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the boy |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=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 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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