---
title: The brother said he could if they would bring him the duck and a kni… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The brother said he could if they would bring him the duck and a knife. Who acts: brother, alas. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 32, 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/pg5615/32/21/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 32, sentence 21

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The brother said he could if they would bring him the duck and a knife.

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**Who acts:** brother, alas · **What happens:** say, bring · **To what, where:** duck, brother · **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 32. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (brother, alas), 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:pg5615:32:21
# text = The brother said he could if they would bring him the duck and a knife.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	brother	brother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	ccomp	_	_
6	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
7	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	bring	bring	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	ccomp	_	_
10	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	duck	duck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	knife	knife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the brother |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **bring** *a condition, not said to happen* | would | alas *= ala* | the duck and a knife | brother |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3-1 «NP V NP NP»: agent=Agent he=Destination duck=Theme |

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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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