---
title: “Behead the messenger who brings this letter secretly and at once. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Behead the messenger who brings this letter secretly and at once. Who acts: you, messenger. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Story Of The King Who Would Be Stronger Than Fate, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Brown Fairy Book, Story Of The King Who Would Be Stronger Than Fate, sentence 156

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“Behead the messenger who brings this letter secretly and at once.

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**Who acts:** you, messenger · **What happens:** behead, bring · **To what, where:** messenger, letter

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Story Of The King Who Would Be Stronger Than Fate. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, messenger), 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:pg3282:33:156
# text = “Behead the messenger who brings this letter secretly and at once.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Behead	behead	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	messenger	messenger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	6	nsubj	_	_
6	brings	bring	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	acl:relcl	_	_
7	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	det	_	_
8	letter	letter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	secretly	secretly	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	9	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **behead** *in a quote* | imperative | you *not said here* | the messenger |  |  |  |  | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent messenger=Patient |
| 2 | **bring** *in a quote* | present | the messenger | this letter |  |  |  | secretly *property* | vn bring-11.3-1 «NP V NP together»: agent=Agent letter=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 Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (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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