---
title: ‘There must be some trick about this; I had better take the sand.’ — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘There must be some trick about this; I had better take the sand.’ Who acts: you, I. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Ring, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Magic Ring, sentence 47

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‘There must be some trick about this; I had better take the sand.’

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**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** be, have, take · **To what, where:** trick, sand

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Ring. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, 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:pg640:33:47
# text = ‘There must be some trick about this; I had better take the sand.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	4	expl	_	_
3	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	cop	_	_
5	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	6	det	_	_
6	trick	trick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
7	about	about	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
12	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	11	xcomp	_	_
13	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	sand	sand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | imperative | you *not said here* | some trick |  |  |  | about this | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** | past | I |  |  |  |  | good *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **take** | infinitive | I *not said here* | the sand |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sand=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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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