---
title: ‘Go and tell the King to swing his sword three times over me on the… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Go and tell the King to swing his sword three times over me on the threshold.’ Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Dwarfs, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Three Dwarfs, part 1, sentence 96

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‘Go and tell the King to swing his sword three times over me on the threshold.’

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** go, tell, swing · **To what, where:** King, sword, threshold · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Dwarfs, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg540:37:96
# text = ‘Go and tell the King to swing his sword three times over me on the threshold.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Go	go	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
4	tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	King	King	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	swing	swing	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
9	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	sword	sword	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	12	nummod	_	_
12	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl:unmarked	_	_
13	over	over	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	obl	_	_
15	on	on	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	threshold	threshold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	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* |  |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | infinitive | you *not said here* |  | the King |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent king=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 3 | **swing** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | you *not said here* | King's sword |  | the threshold | time | over me | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.agent V NP.theme PP.source PP.trajectory PP.destination»: agent=Agent sword=Theme over i=Source on threshold=Trajectory |

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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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