---
title: ‘You can really trust the dog to call your husband?’ asked the robbe… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘You can really trust the dog to call your husband?’ asked the robbers. Who acts: You. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 17, 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/pg5615/17/109/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 17, sentence 109

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‘You can really trust the dog to call your husband?’ asked the robbers.

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**Who acts:** You · **What happens:** trust, call, ask · **To what, where:** dog, husband, robbers · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (You), 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:pg5615:17:109
# text = ‘You can really trust the dog to call your husband?’ asked the robbers.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	really	really	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	trust	trust	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	ccomp	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	call	call	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
10	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	husband	husband	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
14	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	robbers	robber	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **trust** | can | You | the dog |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **call** | to-infinitive | You *not said here* |  | your husband |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent husband=Recipient |
| 3 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past |  | the robbers |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S»: agent=Agent robber=Recipient clause=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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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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