---
title: ‘Can’t tell,’ replied the Simpleton. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Can’t tell,’ replied the Simpleton. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Flying Ship(24), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Flying Ship(24), sentence 20

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‘Can’t tell,’ replied the Simpleton.

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**What happens:** not tell, reply · **To what, where:** Simpleton · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Flying Ship(24). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg640:35:20
# text = ‘Can’t tell,’ replied the Simpleton.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	Simpleton	Simpleton	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **tell** *speech: assert* | can |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past |  | the Simpleton |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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