---
title: ‘Now, my merry little friend,’ said the Musician, ‘run twenty times… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Now, my merry little friend,’ said the Musician, ‘run twenty times round the tree.’ Who acts: merry little friend. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Marvellous Musician, 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/pg540/50/51/)

<!-- 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 Marvellous Musician](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/50/) / 51

# The Red Fairy Book, The Marvellous Musician, sentence 51

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Now, my merry little friend,’ said the Musician, ‘run twenty times round the tree.’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** merry little friend · **What happens:** say, run · **To what, where:** Musician, tree · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Marvellous Musician. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (merry little friend), 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:pg540:50:51
# text = ‘Now, my merry little friend,’ said the Musician, ‘run twenty times round the tree.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
4	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
5	merry	merry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
6	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	friend	friend	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	Musician	musician	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	run	run	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
16	twenty	twenty	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	17	nummod	_	_
17	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obl:unmarked	_	_
18	round	round	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | my merry little friend | the Musician |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **run** | infinitive |  |  |  | the tree | time |  | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme round tree=Trajectory |

<!-- .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 50](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/50/50/)
- next →: [sentence 52](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/50/52/)
- ↑ back to [The Marvellous Musician](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/50/)