---
title: "Never say't twice, mother," says Tom--"here goes." — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "Never say't twice, mother," says Tom--"here goes." Who acts: you, Tom. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Lad With the Goat-skin, 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/pg7885/33/4/)

<!-- 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/) / [Celtic Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/) / [The Lad With the Goat-skin](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/33/) / 4

# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Lad With the Goat-skin, sentence 4

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Never say't twice, mother," says Tom--"here goes."

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you, Tom · **What happens:** not say't, say, be · **To what, where:** mother · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Lad With the Goat-skin. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, Tom), 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:pg7885:33:4
# text = "Never say't twice, mother," says Tom--"here goes."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	3	advmod	_	_
3	say't	say't	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	twice	twice	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
9	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
10	Tom	Tom	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	here	here	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	9	ccomp	_	_
14	goes	go	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **say't** *in a quote* | imperative | you *not said here* | mother |  |  |  | twice *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | Tom |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** *in a quote* | present |  |  |  |  |  | here *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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:** «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7885 (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 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/33/3/)
- next →: [sentence 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/33/5/)
- ↑ back to [The Lad With the Goat-skin](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/33/)