---
title: But listen to what I say. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But listen to what I say. Who acts: you, 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/10/58/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Violet Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/) / [The Grateful Prince, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/10/) / 58

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Grateful Prince, part 2, sentence 58

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But listen to what I say.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** listen, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (you, I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg641:10:58
# text = But listen to what I say.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	2	cc	_	_
2	listen	listen	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	2	obl	_	_
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	say	say	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **listen** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent to what=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 57](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/10/57/)
- next →: [sentence 59](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/10/59/)
- ↑ back to [The Grateful Prince, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/10/)