---
title: And then something came to him--WHAT I cannot tell you. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And then something came to him--WHAT I cannot tell you. Who acts: something, I. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 2, sentence 71

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And then something came to him--WHAT I cannot tell you.

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**Who acts:** something, I · **What happens:** come, not tell · **To what, where:** Petru, you · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (something, 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:pg641:20:71
# text = And then something came to him--WHAT I cannot tell you.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
3	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	4	nsubj	_	_
4	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	WHAT	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	12	obj	_	_
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
10	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	12	advmod	_	_
12	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
13	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	12	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | something |  | Petru |  | then |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to he=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **not** **tell** *speech: assert* | can | I |  | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent you=Recipient what=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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