---
title: He said to the abbot: ‘I can’t tell you how much I enjoy that young… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He said to the abbot: ‘I can’t tell you how much I enjoy that young man’s singing. Who acts: boy, I, young man. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars, sentence 49

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He said to the abbot: ‘I can’t tell you how much I enjoy that young man’s singing.

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**Who acts:** boy, I, young man · **What happens:** say, not tell, enjoy, sing · **To what, where:** abbot, you, much · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boy, I, young man), 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:pg641:4:49
# text = He said to the abbot: ‘I can’t tell you how much I enjoy that young man’s singing.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	abbot	abbot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	_
7	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
12	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	11	iobj	_	_
13	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	14	advmod	_	_
14	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	obj	_	_
15	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	enjoy	enjoy	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	_
17	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	21	mark	_	_
18	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	’s	's	PART	POS	_	19	case	_	_
21	singing	singing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | boy |  | the abbot |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to abbot=Recipient |
| 2 | **not** **tell** *speech: assert* | can | I |  | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent you=Recipient |
| 3 | **enjoy** | present | I | much |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer much=Stimulus |
| 4 | **sing** |  | young man |  |  |  |  |  | nom singing «act transitive»: 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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