---
title: ‘I have more important business on hand than mixing myself up in you… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I have more important business on hand than mixing myself up in your quarrels.’ Who acts: I, hand, your. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Jesper Who Herded the Hares, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, Jesper Who Herded the Hares, sentence 41

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‘I have more important business on hand than mixing myself up in your quarrels.’

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**Who acts:** I, hand, your · **What happens:** have, mix up, quarrel · **To what, where:** important business, hand, myself, quarrels

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Jesper Who Herded the Hares. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, hand, your), 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:pg641:24:41
# text = ‘I have more important business on hand than mixing myself up in your quarrels.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	5	advmod	_	_
5	important	important	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	business	business	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
7	on	on	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	hand	hand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
9	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
10	mixing	mix	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	acl	_	_
11	myself	myself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	10	obj	_	_
12	up	up	ADP	RP	_	10	compound:prt	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	quarrels	quarrel	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | present | I | important business |  | hand |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent business=Patient |
| 2 | **mix up** | gerund | hand *not said here* | myself |  | your quarrels |  |  | vn mix-22.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent myself=Patient |
| 3 | **quarrel** |  | your |  |  |  |  |  | nom quarrel «communication intransitive»: poss=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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