---
title: ‘You can’t think what a piece of good luck has come our way.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘You can’t think what a piece of good luck has come our way.’ Who acts: You, piece. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water., sentence 17

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‘You can’t think what a piece of good luck has come our way.’

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**Who acts:** You, piece · **What happens:** not think, come · **To what, where:** way · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (You, piece), 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:pg641:16:17
# text = ‘You can’t think what a piece of good luck has come our way.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	think	think	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	13	obl	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	piece	piece	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	luck	luck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	_
12	has	have	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	come	come	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	5	ccomp	_	_
14	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **think** *speech: other* | can | You |  |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **come** | present · perfect | a piece of good luck | our way |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location way=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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