---
title: ‘There are several things I must tell you first. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘There are several things I must tell you first. Who acts: several things, 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 13

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‘There are several things I must tell you first.

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**Who acts:** several things, I · **What happens:** be, tell · **To what, where:** several things, 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 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (several things, 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:pg641:21:13
# text = ‘There are several things I must tell you first.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	3	expl	_	_
3	are	be	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	several	several	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
6	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	acl:relcl	_	_
9	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	iobj	_	_
10	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **does** | present | several things |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | must | I | several things *not said here* | you |  |  | first *property* | 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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