---
title: I am certainly not going to spare the old grandmother.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: I am certainly not going to spare the old grandmother.’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Prince, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Grateful Prince, part 2, sentence 51

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I am certainly not going to spare the old grandmother.’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** not go, spare · **To what, where:** old grandmother

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Prince, part 2. 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:pg641:10:51
# text = I am certainly not going to spare the old grandmother.’
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
3	certainly	certainly	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	going	go	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	spare	spare	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	grandmother	grandmother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **go** | present · progressive | I |  |  |  |  | certainly *property* | vn say-37.7 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **spare** | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | the old grandmother |  |  |  |  | vn bill-54.5 «NP V NP NP.asset»: agent=Agent grandmother=Asset |

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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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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