---
title: ‘Didn’t I tell you so!’ said the Darning-needle. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Didn’t I tell you so!’ said the Darning-needle. Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Story About a Darning-needle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, A Story About a Darning-needle, sentence 14

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‘Didn’t I tell you so!’ said the Darning-needle.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** not tell, say · **To what, where:** you, Darning needle · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Story About a Darning-needle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg640:51:14
# text = ‘Didn’t I tell you so!’ said the Darning-needle.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	tell	tell	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	ccomp	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	iobj	_	_
7	so	so	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
12	Darning	darning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	needle	needle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	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* | past · do-support | I |  | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent you=Recipient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the Darning needle |  |  |  |  | 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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