---
title: ‘I will spare your life; but in return you must do something for me. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I will spare your life; but in return you must do something for me. Who acts: I, you. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Ring, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Magic Ring, sentence 170

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‘I will spare your life; but in return you must do something for me.

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**Who acts:** I, you · **What happens:** spare, do · **To what, where:** life, something, return

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Ring. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, you), 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:pg640:33:170
# text = ‘I will spare your life; but in return you must do something for me.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	spare	spare	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	return	return	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
11	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
14	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	13	obj	_	_
15	for	for	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **spare** | future | I | your life |  |  |  |  | vn bill-54.5 «NP V NP NP.asset»: agent=Agent life=Asset |
| 2 | **do** | must | you | something |  | return |  | for me | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent something=Eventuality |

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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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