---
title: Go to sleep,’ said his wife; and the old man tried to. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Go to sleep,’ said his wife; and the old man tried to. Who acts: you, old man. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23, 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/pg3454/23/119/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23, sentence 119

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Go to sleep,’ said his wife; and the old man tried to.

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**Who acts:** you, old man · **What happens:** go, say, try · **To what, where:** sleep, wife · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, old man), 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:pg3454:23:119
# text = Go to sleep,’ said his wife; and the old man tried to.
1	Go	go	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	to	to	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
3	sleep	sleep	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	1	parataxis	_	_
7	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	14	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
14	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	1	parataxis	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  | sleep |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to sleep=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | twirling's wife |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent wife=Topic |
| 3 | **try** | past | the old man |  |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |

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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 Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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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