---
title: How I pity you; and yet I can do nothing to help you! — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: How I pity you; and yet I can do nothing to help you! Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch (28), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/39/14/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Yellow Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/) / [The Witch (28)](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/39/) / 14

# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Witch (28), sentence 14

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
How I pity you; and yet I can do nothing to help you!

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** pity, do, help · **To what, where:** you, nothing

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch (28). 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.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg640:39:14
# text = How I pity you; and yet I can do nothing to help you!
1	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	pity	pity	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	10	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
7	yet	yet	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
8	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
11	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	10	obj	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	acl	_	_
14	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pity** | present | I | you |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer you=Stimulus |
| 2 | **do** | can | I | nothing |  |  | yet |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Eventuality |
| 3 | **help** | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | nothing *not said here* | you |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent you=Beneficiary |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/39/13/)
- next →: [sentence 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/39/15/)
- ↑ back to [The Witch (28)](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/39/)