---
title: But ask me what you please, and I will answer to the best of my abil… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But ask me what you please, and I will answer to the best of my ability." Who acts: you, I. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Golden Fleece., part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Golden Fleece., part 2, sentence 39

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But ask me what you please, and I will answer to the best of my ability."

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**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** ask, answer · **To what, where:** me

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Golden Fleece., part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, 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:pg976:26:39
# text = But ask me what you please, and I will answer to the best of my ability."
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	2	cc	_	_
2	ask	ask	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	2	ccomp	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
6	please	please	INTJ	UH	_	4	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	answer	answer	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
12	to	to	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	best	good	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	11	ccomp	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	ability	ability	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | me |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | future | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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:** «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Project Gutenberg book 976 (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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