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

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/40/129/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Red Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/) / [The Enchanted Canary](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/40/) / 129

# The Red Fairy Book, The Enchanted Canary, sentence 129

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘I am thirsty; give me something to drink.’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** be, give, drink · **To what, where:** something, me

<!-- .vabout -->
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), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg540:40:129
# text = ‘I am thirsty; 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	cop	_	_
4	thirsty	thirsty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	6	punct	_	_
6	give	give	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	parataxis	_	_
7	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	iobj	_	_
8	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	6	obj	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	drink	drink	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | I |  |  |  |  | thirsty *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **give** | infinitive |  | something | me |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient something=Theme |
| 3 | **drink** | to-infinitive |  | something *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 128](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/40/128/)
- next →: [sentence 130](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/40/130/)
- ↑ back to [The Enchanted Canary](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/40/)