---
title: 'Oh! dear mother, spare me!' shrieked Pinkel, falling on his knees,… — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'Oh! dear mother, spare me!' shrieked Pinkel, falling on his knees, and looking wildly about him. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 17, 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/pg3027/17/48/)

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 17, sentence 48

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'Oh! dear mother, spare me!' shrieked Pinkel, falling on his knees, and looking wildly about him.

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**What happens:** spare, shriek, fall, look · **To what, where:** me, Pinkel, knees

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg3027:17:48
# text = 'Oh! dear mother, spare me!' shrieked Pinkel, falling on his knees, and looking wildly about him.
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	7	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
4	dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
7	spare	spare	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
8	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
11	shrieked	shriek	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	Pinkel	Pinkel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
14	falling	fall	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	11	advcl	_	_
15	on	on	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	knees	knee	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
20	looking	look	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	14	conj	_	_
21	wildly	wildly	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
22	about	about	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
23	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **spare** | infinitive |  | me |  |  |  |  | vn bill-54.5 «NP V NP NP.asset»: agent=Agent i=Asset |
| 2 | **shriek** | past |  | Pinkel |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **fall** | gerund |  |  |  | Pinkel's knees |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme on knee=Location |
| 4 | **look** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  | about Pinkel; wildly *property* | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent about he=Theme |

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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 Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (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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