---
title: ‘How can you do that, and how can I tell if I can trust you?’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘How can you do that, and how can I tell if I can trust you?’ Who acts: you, I. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Nunda, Eater of People, sentence 114

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‘How can you do that, and how can I tell if I can trust you?’

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**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** do, tell, trust · **To what, where:** that, you · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, 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:pg641:29:114
# text = ‘How can you do that, and how can I tell if I can trust you?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
9	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	12	advmod	_	_
10	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
11	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
13	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
14	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
15	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
16	trust	trust	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	ccomp	_	_
17	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | can | you | that |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent that=Eventuality |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | can | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **trust** *a condition, not said to happen* | can | I | you |  |  |  |  | vn conjecture-29.5-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent you=Theme |

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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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