---
title: ‘You had better not look at me so hard!’ said the Soldier. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘You had better not look at me so hard!’ said the Soldier. Who acts: You, Soldier. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tinder-box, 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/pg640/46/42/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Tinder-box, sentence 42

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‘You had better not look at me so hard!’ said the Soldier.

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**Who acts:** You, Soldier · **What happens:** have, not look, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tinder-box. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (You, Soldier), 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:pg640:46:42
# text = ‘You had better not look at me so hard!’ said the Soldier.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	ccomp	_	_
4	better	well	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	6	advmod	_	_
5	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
6	look	look	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
7	at	at	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	obl	_	_
9	so	so	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	hard	hard	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	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	Soldier	Soldier	PROPN	NNP	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 | **have** | past | You |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **look** | infinitive | You *not said here* |  |  |  |  | at me; hard, well *property* | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at i=Theme |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Soldier |  |  |  |  |  | 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 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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