---
title: “You had really better keep yourself dry,” said the Fire-balloon. — The Happy Prince, and Other Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “You had really better keep yourself dry,” said the Fire-balloon. Who acts: You, better, Fire balloon. A sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 6, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 6, sentence 84

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“You had really better keep yourself dry,” said the Fire-balloon.

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**Who acts:** You, better, Fire balloon · **What happens:** have, keep, say · **To what, where:** yourself · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (You, better, Fire balloon), 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:pg902:6:84
# text = “You had really better keep yourself dry,” said the Fire-balloon.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	ccomp	_	_
4	really	really	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	6	nsubj	_	_
6	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
7	yourself	yourself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=2|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	6	obj	_	_
8	dry	dry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
13	Fire	Fire	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	15	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	balloon	balloon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** *in a quote* | past | You |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **keep** *in a quote* | infinitive | better | yourself |  |  |  | dry *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent yourself=Theme |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Fire balloon |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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 Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Project Gutenberg book 902 (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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