---
title: Never, never before, did I have such a wearisome task! — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Never, never before, did I have such a wearisome task! Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Vivien and the Princess Placida, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, Prince Vivien and the Princess Placida, part 3, sentence 4

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Never, never before, did I have such a wearisome task!

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** have · **To what, where:** wearisome task

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Vivien and the Princess Placida, part 3. 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:pg7277:38:4
# text = Never, never before, did I have such a wearisome task!
1	Never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	before	before	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
6	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
7	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
9	such	such	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	12	det:predet	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	wearisome	wearisome	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	task	task	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past · do-support | I | such wearisome task |  |  |  | before *property* | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent task=Patient |

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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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