---
title: ‘I have never yet let a man slip through my fingers.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I have never yet let a man slip through my fingers.’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Stan Bolovan, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, Stan Bolovan, sentence 88

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‘I have never yet let a man slip through my fingers.’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** not let · **To what, where:** man slip, fingers

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Stan Bolovan. 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:pg641:13:88
# text = ‘I have never yet let a man slip through my fingers.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
4	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
5	yet	yet	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	let	let	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
9	slip	slip	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
10	through	through	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	fingers	finger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **let** | present | I | a man slip |  | my fingers | yet |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent slip=Theme |

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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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