---
title: Say what you will, he will be nothing but a Mannikin--’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Say what you will, he will be nothing but a Mannikin--’ Who acts: you, son. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Heart of Ice, part 1, 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/pg7277/14/11/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, Heart of Ice, part 1, sentence 11

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Say what you will, he will be nothing but a Mannikin--’

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**Who acts:** you, son · **What happens:** say, be · **To what, where:** nothing · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Heart of Ice, 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, son), 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:pg7277:14:11
# text = Say what you will, he will be nothing but a Mannikin--’
1	Say	say	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	1	obj	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	2	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
7	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
8	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	cop	_	_
9	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	1	parataxis	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	Mannikin	Mannikin	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=Topic |
| 2 | **is a** | future | son | nothing |  |  |  |  | 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 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.

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