---
title: ‘You can’t really mean what you say?’ replied the woman. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘You can’t really mean what you say?’ replied the woman. Who acts: You. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples, sentence 147

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‘You can’t really mean what you say?’ replied the woman.

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**Who acts:** You · **What happens:** not mean, say, reply · **To what, where:** woman · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (You), 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:pg641:7:147
# text = ‘You can’t really mean what you say?’ replied the woman.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
5	really	really	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	mean	mean	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	ccomp	_	_
7	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	9	obj	_	_
8	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	say	say	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
12	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **mean** | can | You |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=Topic |
| 3 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past |  | the woman |  |  |  |  | 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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