---
title: May I be permitted to ask your name?’ — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: May I be permitted to ask your name?’ Who acts: your. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 6, 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/pg5615/6/3/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 6, sentence 3

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May I be permitted to ask your name?’

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**Who acts:** your · **What happens:** permit, ask, name · **To what, where:** I, name

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (your), 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:pg5615:6:3
# text = May I be permitted to ask your name?’
1	May	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	aux:pass	_	_
4	permitted	permit	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	name	name	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **permit** | may · passive |  | I |  |  |  |  | vn allow-64.1-1 «NP V NP S»: subject=Beneficiary clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* *not said to happen* | to-infinitive |  | your name |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent name=Recipient |
| 3 | **name** |  | your |  |  |  |  |  | nom name «communication transitive»: poss=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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