---
title: I’ve a good mind to chop off your great head as a punishment.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: I’ve a good mind to chop off your great head as a punishment.’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Dwarf Long Nose, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The History of Dwarf Long Nose, part 3, sentence 71

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I’ve a good mind to chop off your great head as a punishment.’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** have, chop off · **To what, where:** good mind, great head

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Dwarf Long Nose, 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:pg641:28:71
# text = I’ve a good mind to chop off your great head as a punishment.’
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	’ve	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	mind	mind	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	chop	chop	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	advcl	_	_
8	off	off	ADP	RP	_	7	compound:prt	_	_
9	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
10	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
12	as	as	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	punishment	punishment	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | present | I | a good mind |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent mind=Patient |
| 2 | **chop off** | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | your great head |  |  |  | as a punishment | vn carve-21.2-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=Patient |

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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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