---
title: Tell him that he can be our goose-boy if he likes.” — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Tell him that he can be our goose-boy if he likes.” Who acts: you, person. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 13, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 13, sentence 8

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Tell him that he can be our goose-boy if he likes.”

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**Who acts:** you, person · **What happens:** tell, be, like · **To what, where:** person, goose boy · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 13. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, person), 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:pg2435:13:8
# text = Tell him that he can be our goose-boy if he likes.”
1	Tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	iobj	_	_
3	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
5	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
6	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	cop	_	_
7	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
8	goose	goose	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	advcl	_	_
11	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	likes	like	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | person |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent he=Recipient |
| 2 | **is a** | can | person | our goose boy |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **like** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | person |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot |

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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 Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 2435 (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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