---
title: Let him play a tune if it will make him happy.” — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Let him play a tune if it will make him happy.” Who acts: you, man, light. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 14, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 14, sentence 67

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Let him play a tune if it will make him happy.”

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**Who acts:** you, man, light · **What happens:** let, play, make · **To what, where:** man, tune

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 14. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, man, light), 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:pg2435:14:67
# text = Let him play a tune if it will make him happy.”
1	Let	let	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	obj	_	_
3	play	play	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	xcomp	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	tune	tune	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	_
10	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	_
11	happy	happy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **let** | imperative | you *not said here* | man |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **play** | infinitive | man *not said here* | a tune |  |  |  |  | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tune=Theme |
| 3 | **make** *a condition, not said to happen* | future | light | man |  |  |  | happy *property* | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.material V NP»: agent=Material he=Product |

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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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