---
title: ‘I will by-and-by, but first I want to ask you a question! — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I will by-and-by, but first I want to ask you a question! Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 3, sentence 112

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‘I will by-and-by, but first I want to ask you a question!

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** want, ask · **To what, where:** question, you

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 3. 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:pg641:21:112
# text = ‘I will by-and-by, but first I want to ask you a question!
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
4	by	by	ADP	IN	_	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	by	by	ADP	IN	_	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	13	advmod	_	_
12	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	want	want	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
16	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	15	iobj	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	question	question	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **want** | future | I |  |  |  |  | first *property* | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | a question | you |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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