---
title: It IS a pike--you needn’t attempt to say it’s not. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It IS a pike--you needn’t attempt to say it’s not. Who acts: piece, you. 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 42

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It IS a pike--you needn’t attempt to say it’s not.

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**Who acts:** piece, you · **What happens:** be, not attempt, not say · **To what, where:** pike · **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 (piece, you), 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:pg641:16:42
# text = It IS a pike--you needn’t attempt to say it’s not.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	IS	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	pike	pike	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
7	need	need	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	9	advmod	_	_
9	attempt	attempt	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	acl:relcl	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’s	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	ccomp	_	_
14	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | piece | a pike |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **attempt** | present | you | a pike *not said here* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **not** **say** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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