---
title: ‘Let me see your hand, that I may read the future.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Let me see your hand, that I may read the future.’ Who acts: you, me, I. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Child Who Came From an Egg, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Child Who Came From an Egg, sentence 9

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‘Let me see your hand, that I may read the future.’

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**Who acts:** you, me, I · **What happens:** let, see, read · **To what, where:** me, hand, future

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Child Who Came From an Egg. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, me, 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:pg641:12:9
# text = ‘Let me see your hand, that I may read the future.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Let	let	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	hand	hand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	read	read	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	future	future	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **let** | imperative | you *not said here* | me |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **see** | infinitive | me *not said here* | your hand |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer hand=Stimulus |
| 3 | **read** | may | I | the future |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent future=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 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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