---
title: ‘Don’t drown him, sell him to me instead,’ begged Martin. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Don’t drown him, sell him to me instead,’ begged Martin. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/33/28/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Magic Ring, sentence 28

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‘Don’t drown him, sell him to me instead,’ begged Martin.

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**What happens:** not drown, sell, beg · **To what, where:** peasant, Martin · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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: 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:pg640:33:28
# text = ‘Don’t drown him, sell him to me instead,’ begged Martin.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Do	do	AUX	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	drown	drown	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	ccomp	_	_
5	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	sell	sell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
8	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	iobj	_	_
9	to	to	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	obl	_	_
11	instead	instead	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
14	begged	beg	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	Martin	Martin	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **drown** | infinitive · do-support |  | peasant |  |  |  |  | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Patient |
| 2 | **sell** | infinitive |  |  | peasant |  |  | to me; instead *property* | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent he=Theme to i=Recipient |
| 3 | **beg** *speech: request* | past |  |  | Martin |  |  |  | vn beg-58.2-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent martin=Recipient clause=Topic |

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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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