---
title: ‘Leave it to the Town Counsellor,’ said the citizens one to another. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Leave it to the Town Counsellor,’ said the citizens one to another. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Ratcatcher, 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/pg540/32/23/)

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Ratcatcher, sentence 23

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‘Leave it to the Town Counsellor,’ said the citizens one to another.

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**What happens:** leave, say · **To what, where:** truth, Town Counsellor, citizens · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Ratcatcher. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg540:32:23
# text = ‘Leave it to the Town Counsellor,’ said the citizens one to another.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Leave	leave	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	to	to	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	Town	town	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	Counsellor	counsellor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	citizens	citizen	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	_
13	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	12	flat	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	another	another	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	13	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **leave** | infinitive |  | truth | the Town Counsellor |  |  |  | vn fulfilling-13.4.1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent it=Theme to counsellor=Recipient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the citizens |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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