---
title: Tell me what it is that I can have the honour of doing for you.' — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Tell me what it is that I can have the honour of doing for you.' Who acts: you, turn, honour. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 34, 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/pg3027/34/47/)

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 34, sentence 47

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Tell me what it is that I can have the honour of doing for you.'

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**Who acts:** you, turn, honour · **What happens:** tell, be, do · **To what, where:** me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 34. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, turn, honour), 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:pg3027:34:47
# text = Tell me what it is that I can have the honour of doing for you.'
1	Tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	1	iobj	_	_
3	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	9	obj	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
6	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
7	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	ccomp	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	honour	honour	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	of	of	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
13	doing	do	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	11	acl	_	_
14	for	for	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | me |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP what S»: agent=Agent i=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **is** | can · present | turn |  |  |  |  | have *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **do** | gerund | the honour *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for you | vn act-114-1 «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:** «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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