---
title: He could neither live nor die; he suffered horribly, and called loud… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He could neither live nor die; he suffered horribly, and called loudly on Death to put an end to his pains. Who acts: death. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/42/141/)

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Nettle Spinner, sentence 141

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He could neither live nor die; he suffered horribly, and called loudly on Death to put an end to his pains.

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**Who acts:** death · **What happens:** live, die, suffer, call, put, pain · **To what, where:** Death, end · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (death), 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:pg540:42:141
# text = He could neither live nor die; he suffered horribly, and called loudly on Death to put an end to his pains.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	neither	neither	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	live	live	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	6	cc	_	_
6	die	die	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	suffered	suffer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
10	horribly	horribly	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	conj	_	_
14	loudly	loudly	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
15	on	on	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	Death	Death	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
17	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	mark	_	_
18	put	put	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	advcl	_	_
19	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	end	end	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	_
21	to	to	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
22	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	23	nmod:poss	_	_
23	pains	pain	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **live** | could | death |  |  |  |  | neither *property* | vn exist-47.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **die** | infinitive | death *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 3 | **suffer** | past | death |  |  |  |  | horribly *property* | vn marvel-31.3 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 4 | **call** | participle | death *not said here* |  |  | Death |  | loudly *property* | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **put** | to-infinitive | death *not said here* | a end |  |  |  | to death's pains | vn invest-13.5.4-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent end=Goal |
| 6 | **pain** |  | death |  |  |  |  |  | nom pain «state transitive»: poss=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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