---
title: ‘No,’ he answered, ‘I am not a thief. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘No,’ he answered, ‘I am not a thief. Who acts: youth, I. 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 41

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‘No,’ he answered, ‘I am not a thief.

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**Who acts:** youth, I · **What happens:** answer, not be · **To what, where:** thief

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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 (youth, 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:pg7277:21:41
# text = ‘No,’ he answered, ‘I am not a thief.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	No	no	INTJ	UH	Polarity=Neg	6	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
10	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
11	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	thief	thief	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | youth |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **not** **is a** | present | I | a thief |  |  |  |  | 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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