---
title: If you serve me faithfully for a year, I promise you it shall be for… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: If you serve me faithfully for a year, I promise you it shall be for your advantage.’ Who acts: you, I, labourer. 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/pg640/33/43/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Magic Ring, sentence 43

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If you serve me faithfully for a year, I promise you it shall be for your advantage.’

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**Who acts:** you, I, labourer · **What happens:** serve, promise, be · **To what, where:** me, you · **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: who acts (you, I, labourer), 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:pg640:33:43
# text = If you serve me faithfully for a year, I promise you it shall be for your advantage.’
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	serve	serve	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	_
4	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	faithfully	faithfully	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
6	for	for	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
10	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	promise	promise	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	11	iobj	_	_
13	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
14	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
15	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	cop	_	_
16	for	for	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	advantage	advantage	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **serve** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | you | me |  |  | year | faithfully *property* | vn masquerade-29.6-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Attribute |
| 2 | **promise** *speech: promise* | present | I |  | you |  |  |  | vn future\_having-13.3 «NP V NP.theme (PP)»: agent=Agent you=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | shall | labourer |  |  |  |  | for your advantage | tree rules |

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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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