---
title: He told these to change night-caps with the witch’s daughters. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He told these to change night-caps with the witch’s daughters. Who acts: addition, these. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 28, 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/pg5615/28/25/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 28, sentence 25

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He told these to change night-caps with the witch’s daughters.

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**Who acts:** addition, these · **What happens:** tell, change · **To what, where:** these, night caps · **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 28. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (addition, these), 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:pg5615:28:25
# text = He told these to change night-caps with the witch’s daughters.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	these	this	PRON	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	2	obj	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	change	change	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
6	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	caps	cap	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	_
9	with	with	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	witch	witch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’s	's	PART	POS	_	11	case	_	_
13	daughters	daughter	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | addition | these |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent this=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **change** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | these *not said here* | night caps |  |  |  | with the witch's daughters | vn exchange-13.6.1 «NP V NP PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent cap=Theme with daughter=Co-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 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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