---
title: At length he collected himself enough to say:—“If this young man wil… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: At length he collected himself enough to say:—“If this young man will enlist in my army I will let him off. Who acts: story, young man. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/33/88/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Brown Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/) / [Story Of The King Who Would Be Stronge…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/33/) / 88

# The Brown Fairy Book, Story Of The King Who Would Be Stronger Than Fate, sentence 88

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
At length he collected himself enough to say:—“If this young man will enlist in my army I will let him off.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** story, young man · **What happens:** collect, say, enlist, let off · **To what, where:** story, length, army · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (story, young man), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg3282:33:88
# text = At length he collected himself enough to say:—“If this young man will enlist in my army I will let him off.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	length	length	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
3	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	collected	collect	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	4	obj	_	_
6	enough	enough	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	—	-	PUNCT	:	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
13	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	15	det	_	_
14	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
16	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
17	enlist	enlist	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	parataxis	_	_
18	in	in	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	20	nmod:poss	_	_
20	army	army	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	obl	_	_
21	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	23	nsubj	_	_
22	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	23	aux	_	_
23	let	let	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	ccomp	_	_
24	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	23	obj	_	_
25	off	off	ADP	RP	_	23	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **collect** | past | story | story |  | length |  | enough *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | story *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **enlist** *a condition, not said to happen, in a quote* | future | this young man |  |  |  |  |  | vn hire-13.5.3 «NP V NP to be NP»: agent=Agent clause=Attribute |
| 4 | **let off** *in a quote* | future | story | story |  | my army |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 87](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/33/87/)
- next →: [sentence 89](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/33/89/)
- ↑ back to [Story Of The King Who Would Be Stronger Than Fate](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/33/)