---
title: ‘Did not I tell you, my father, that salt was the best thing in life? — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Did not I tell you, my father, that salt was the best thing in life? Who acts: I, salt. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Dirty Shepherdess, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Dirty Shepherdess, sentence 48

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‘Did not I tell you, my father, that salt was the best thing in life?

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**Who acts:** I, salt · **What happens:** not tell, be · **To what, where:** you, best thing, life · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Dirty Shepherdess. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, salt), 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:pg7277:24:48
# text = ‘Did not I tell you, my father, that salt was the best thing in life?
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	tell	tell	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
11	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	12	det	_	_
12	salt	salt	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
13	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	best	good	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	16	amod	_	_
16	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	appos	_	_
17	in	in	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod	_	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 | **not** **tell** *speech: assert* | past · do-support | I |  | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent you=Recipient |
| 2 | **is a** | past | that salt | the best thing |  | life |  |  | 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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