---
title: Lash him to the mast and give him a taste of the cat-o’-nine-tails. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Lash him to the mast and give him a taste of the cat-o’-nine-tails. Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Princess Mayblossom, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Princess Mayblossom, part 2, sentence 67

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Lash him to the mast and give him a taste of the cat-o’-nine-tails.

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** lash, give, taste · **To what, where:** boatman, taste, nine tails, cat o

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Princess Mayblossom, part 2. 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:pg540:4:67
# text = Lash him to the mast and give him a taste of the cat-o’-nine-tails.
1	Lash	lash	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	obj	_	_
3	to	to	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	mast	mast	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	give	give	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	1	conj	_	_
8	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	iobj	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	taste	taste	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
13	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	o	o	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	nine	nine	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	20	nummod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	tails	tail	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lash** | imperative | you *not said here* | boatman |  |  |  | to the mast | vn tape-22.4 «NP V NP PP.co-patient»: agent=Agent he=Patient to mast=Co-Patient |
| 2 | **give** | infinitive | you *not said here* | a taste of the cat o | nine tails |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **taste** |  |  | the cat o |  |  |  |  | nom taste «cognition transitive»: of=patient |

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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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