---
title: But the robbers offered him forty gold pieces, and at last he agreed… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the robbers offered him forty gold pieces, and at last he agreed to let them have the dog. Who acts: robbers, dog. 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/pg5615/17/120/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 17, sentence 120

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But the robbers offered him forty gold pieces, and at last he agreed to let them have the dog.

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**Who acts:** robbers, dog · **What happens:** offer, agree, let, have · **To what, where:** forty gold pieces, dog, last, robbers

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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 (robbers, dog), 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:pg5615:17:120
# text = But the robbers offered him forty gold pieces, and at last he agreed to let them have the dog.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	robbers	robber	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	offered	offer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	iobj	_	_
6	forty	forty	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	nummod	_	_
7	gold	gold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	_
8	pieces	piece	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	last	last	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
13	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	agreed	agree	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	let	let	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	xcomp	_	_
17	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	_
18	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	xcomp	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **offer** | past | the robbers | forty gold pieces | dog |  |  |  | vn future\_having-13.3 «NP V NP.goal NP»: agent=Agent he=Goal piece=Theme |
| 2 | **agree** *speech: agree* | past | dog |  |  | last |  |  | vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **let** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | dog *not said here* | robbers *= robber* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **have** | infinitive | robbers *= robber* *not said here* | the dog |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dog=Patient |

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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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