---
title: And I thought I had better come straight and tell you.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And I thought I had better come straight and tell you.’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Envious Neighbour, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Envious Neighbour, sentence 25

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And I thought I had better come straight and tell you.’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** think, have, come, tell · **To what, where:** you · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Envious Neighbour. 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:pg641:18:25
# text = And I thought I had better come straight and tell you.’
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	ccomp	_	_
6	better	well	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	5	advmod	_	_
7	come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	straight	straight	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	conj	_	_
11	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	10	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **think** *speech: other* | past | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **have** | past | I |  |  |  |  | well *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **come** | infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  | straight *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **tell** *speech: assert* | infinitive | I *not said here* |  | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent you=Recipient |

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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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