---
title: YOU can’t speak; YOU don’t know how to choose your words. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: YOU can’t speak; YOU don’t know how to choose your words. Who acts: YOU, your. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Steadfast Tin-soldier, 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/pg640/50/106/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Steadfast Tin-soldier, sentence 106

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YOU can’t speak; YOU don’t know how to choose your words.

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**Who acts:** YOU, your · **What happens:** not speak, not know, choose, word · **To what, where:** words · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Steadfast Tin-soldier. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (YOU, your), 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:pg640:50:106
# text = YOU can’t speak; YOU don’t know how to choose your words.
1	YOU	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	speak	speak	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	9	punct	_	_
6	YOU	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
7	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	9	advmod	_	_
9	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
10	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	12	advmod	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	choose	choose	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
13	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **speak** *speech: other* | can | YOU |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **not** **know** | present · do-support | YOU |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 3 | **choose** | to-infinitive |  | your words |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent word=Theme |
| 4 | **word** |  | your |  |  |  |  |  | nom word «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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