---
title: ‘Why should you not?’ said the Princess timidly. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Why should you not?’ said the Princess timidly. Who acts: Princess. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/12/73/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Green Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/) / [Prince Featherhead and the Princess Ce…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/12/) / 73

# The Green Fairy Book, Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine, sentence 73

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Why should you not?’ said the Princess timidly.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Princess · **What happens:** say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Princess), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg7277:12:73
# text = ‘Why should you not?’ said the Princess timidly.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
3	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
5	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	Princess	Princess	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
11	timidly	timidly	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Princess |  |  |  |  | timidly *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 72](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/12/72/)
- next →: [sentence 74](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/12/74/)
- ↑ back to [Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/12/)