---
title: ‘She shall be spared,’ they promised, ‘only tell us the news.’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘She shall be spared,’ they promised, ‘only tell us the news.’ Who acts: others. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Brothers, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Twelve Brothers, sentence 59

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‘She shall be spared,’ they promised, ‘only tell us the news.’

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**Who acts:** others · **What happens:** spare, promise, tell · **To what, where:** girl, news, us · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Brothers. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (others), 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:pg540:41:59
# text = ‘She shall be spared,’ they promised, ‘only tell us the news.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	aux:pass	_	_
5	spared	spare	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’	'	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	promised	promise	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	only	only	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	conj	_	_
14	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	iobj	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	news	news	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **spare** | shall · passive |  | girl |  |  |  |  | vn bill-54.5 «NP V NP NP.asset»: subject=Asset |
| 2 | **promise** *speech: promise* | past | others *= other* |  |  |  |  |  | vn promise-37.13 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* | infinitive | others *= other* *not said here* | the news | us |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent we=Recipient news=Topic |

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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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