---
title: ‘Bah,’ said his brothers, ‘you will never succeed any better than we… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Bah,’ said his brothers, ‘you will never succeed any better than we did. Who acts: you, we. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Blackbird, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Golden Blackbird, sentence 22

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‘Bah,’ said his brothers, ‘you will never succeed any better than we did.

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**Who acts:** you, we · **What happens:** say, not succeed, do · **To what, where:** brothers · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Blackbird. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, we), 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:pg7277:21:22
# text = ‘Bah,’ said his brothers, ‘you will never succeed any better than we did.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Bah	bah	INTJ	UH	_	5	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	brothers	brother	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	‘	‘	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	succeed	succeed	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
14	any	any	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	13	xcomp	_	_
16	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
17	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
18	did	do	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | landlord's brothers |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent brother=Topic |
| 2 | **not** **succeed** | future | you |  |  |  |  | good *property* | vn succeed-74-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **do** | past | we |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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