---
title: But what God commands, man can do. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But what God commands, man can do. Who acts: God, man. 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/pg540/42/54/)

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Nettle Spinner, sentence 54

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But what God commands, man can do.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** God, man · **What happens:** command, do · **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 (God, man), 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:pg540:42:54
# text = But what God commands, man can do.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	obj	_	_
3	God	God	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	commands	command	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
6	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
7	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **command** | present | God |  |  |  |  |  | vn order-58.3-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent what=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **do** | can | man |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «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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