---
title: Wilhelm, to please her, told her that she might. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Wilhelm, to please her, told her that she might. Who acts: Wilhelm. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Antonio Canova., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/54/199/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Antonio Canova., sentence 199

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Wilhelm, to please her, told her that she might.

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**Who acts:** Wilhelm · **What happens:** please, tell · **To what, where:** MIGNON · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Antonio Canova.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wilhelm), 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:pg18442:54:199
# text = Wilhelm, to please her, told her that she might.
1	Wilhelm	Wilhelm	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	please	please	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	1	parataxis	_	_
5	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
7	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	iobj	_	_
9	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
10	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	might	might	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **please** | to-infinitive |  | MIGNON |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus she=Experiencer |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | Wilhelm |  | MIGNON |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent she=Recipient |

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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:** «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (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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- ← previous: [sentence 198](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/54/198/)
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- ↑ back to [Antonio Canova.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/54/)