---
title: ‘Tell us what is wrong: and though we are not boys, we are not quite… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Tell us what is wrong: and though we are not boys, we are not quite useless!’ Who acts: you, we, boys. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy, part 1, sentence 18

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‘Tell us what is wrong: and though we are not boys, we are not quite useless!’

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**Who acts:** you, we, boys · **What happens:** tell, be, not be · **To what, where:** us, boys · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, we, boys), 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:pg641:38:18
# text = ‘Tell us what is wrong: and though we are not boys, we are not quite useless!’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	nsubj	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	wrong	wrong	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	19	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
9	though	though	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
10	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
12	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
15	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
16	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
17	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	19	advmod	_	_
18	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
19	useless	useless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | us |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent we=Recipient |
| 2 | **is** | present |  |  |  |  |  | wrong *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **not** **is a** | present | we | boys |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **not** **is** | present | boys |  |  |  |  | useless *property* | 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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