---
title: ‘Sell him to us,’ said the robbers. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Sell him to us,’ said the robbers. 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/pg5615/17/41/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 17, sentence 41

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‘Sell him to us,’ said the robbers.

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**What happens:** sell, say · **To what, where:** donkey, 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: 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:pg5615:17:41
# text = ‘Sell him to us,’ said the robbers.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Sell	sell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	ccomp	_	_
3	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	_
4	to	to	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	robbers	robber	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sell** | infinitive |  |  | donkey |  |  | to us | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent he=Theme to we=Recipient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the robbers |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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