---
title: I say! why are you beating the pedlar’s donkey like that?” — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: I say! why are you beating the pedlar’s donkey like that?” Who acts: I, you. 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 67

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I say! why are you beating the pedlar’s donkey like that?”

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**Who acts:** I, you · **What happens:** say, beat · **To what, where:** donkey · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (I, you), 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:pg3282:33:67
# text = I say! why are you beating the pedlar’s donkey like that?”
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	say	say	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
4	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	_
5	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	beating	beat	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	ccomp	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	pedlar	pedlar	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’s	's	PART	POS	_	9	case	_	_
11	donkey	donkey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
12	like	like	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	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 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **beat** | present · progressive | you | the pedlar's donkey |  |  |  | like that | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location donkey=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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