---
title: I shall know better what to say this time.’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: I shall know better what to say this time.’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Snuff-box, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Snuff-box, sentence 6

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I shall know better what to say this time.’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** know, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Snuff-box. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg7277:20:6
# text = I shall know better what to say this time.’
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	better	well	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	3	advmod	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
8	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	9	det	_	_
9	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** | shall | I |  |  |  |  | well *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  |  | time |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=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 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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