---
title: 'Let them both die, but they may choose their own deaths.' — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'Let them both die, but they may choose their own deaths.' Who acts: you, both, people. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 4, 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/pg3027/4/43/)

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 4, sentence 43

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'Let them both die, but they may choose their own deaths.'

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**Who acts:** you, both, people · **What happens:** let, die, choose · **To what, where:** people, own deaths

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, both, people), 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:pg3027:4:43
# text = 'Let them both die, but they may choose their own deaths.'
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Let	let	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	both	both	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	5	nsubj	_	_
5	die	die	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	choose	choose	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
11	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
12	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	deaths	death	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	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* | people |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **die** | present | both |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 3 | **choose** | may | people | people's own deaths |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent death=Theme |
| 4 | **die** |  | people |  |  |  |  |  | nom death «event intransitive»: poss=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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