---
title: “Breeches or trousers, or whatever you please, sir.” — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Breeches or trousers, or whatever you please, sir.” Who acts: you. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Master of All Masters, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Master of All Masters, sentence 11

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“Breeches or trousers, or whatever you please, sir.”

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** sir

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Master of All Masters. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg7439:48:11
# text = “Breeches or trousers, or whatever you please, sir.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Breeches	breech	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
3	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
4	trousers	trousers	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	whatever	whatever	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	0	root	_	_
8	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	please	please	INTJ	UH	_	11	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	sir	sir	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sir** *in a quote* |  | you |  |  |  |  |  | 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:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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