---
title: Dear me, your nails are terribly long; I must really cut them first.’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Dear me, your nails are terribly long; I must really cut them first.’ Who acts: me, I. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of a Clever Tailor, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/51/41/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Green Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/) / [The Story of a Clever Tailor](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/51/) / 41

# The Green Fairy Book, The Story of a Clever Tailor, sentence 41

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Dear me, your nails are terribly long; I must really cut them first.’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** me, I · **What happens:** be, cut · **To what, where:** nails

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of a Clever Tailor. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (me, I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg7277:51:41
# text = Dear me, your nails are terribly long; I must really cut them first.’
1	Dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
2	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
4	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	nails	nail	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
6	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
7	terribly	terribly	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	really	really	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	cut	cut	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	conj	_	_
14	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	13	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | me |  |  |  |  | long, terribly *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **cut** | must | I | nails *= nail* |  |  |  | first *property* | vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Product |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 40](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/51/40/)
- next →: [sentence 42](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/51/42/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of a Clever Tailor](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/51/)