---
title: ‘Whatever you like!’ said Halfman. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Whatever you like!’ said Halfman. Who acts: you, Halfman. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Halfman, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/41/70/)

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Story of Halfman, sentence 70

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‘Whatever you like!’ said Halfman.

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**Who acts:** you, Halfman · **What happens:** like, say · **To what, where:** Whatever · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Halfman. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, Halfman), 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:pg641:41:70
# text = ‘Whatever you like!’ said Halfman.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Whatever	whatever	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	4	obj	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	like	like	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	Halfman	Halfman	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **like** | present | you | Whatever |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot whatever=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Halfman |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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