---
title: Can I be of any help to you, and thus repay your great kindness to m… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Can I be of any help to you, and thus repay your great kindness to me?’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Beasts(11), part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Grateful Beasts(11), part 1, sentence 91

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Can I be of any help to you, and thus repay your great kindness to me?’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** be, repay · **To what, where:** you, great kindness, me

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Beasts(11), part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg640:14:91
# text = Can I be of any help to you, and thus repay your great kindness to me?’
1	Can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	cop	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	6	det	_	_
6	help	help	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	thus	thus	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	repay	repay	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	6	parataxis	_	_
13	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
14	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	kindness	kindness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
16	to	to	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | can | I |  | you |  |  | of any help | tree rules |
| 2 | **repay** | infinitive |  | your great kindness | me |  |  | thus *property* | vn equip-13.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent kindness=Recipient |

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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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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