---
title: ‘I am dying of thirst; give me something to drink.’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I am dying of thirst; give me something to drink.’ Who acts: I, you. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Canary, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Enchanted Canary, sentence 118

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‘I am dying of thirst; give me something to drink.’

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**Who acts:** I, you · **What happens:** die, give, drink · **To what, where:** something, me

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Canary. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, 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:pg540:40:118
# text = ‘I am dying of thirst; give me something to drink.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	dying	die	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	csubj	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	thirst	thirst	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	8	punct	_	_
8	give	give	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
9	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	iobj	_	_
10	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	8	obj	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	drink	drink	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **die** | present · progressive | I |  |  |  |  | of thirst | vn die-42.4-1 «NP V PP.cause»: agent=Patient of thirst=Causer |
| 2 | **give** | imperative | you *not said here* | something | me |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient something=Theme |
| 3 | **drink** | to-infinitive | you *not said here* | something *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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