---
title: ‘Could you not protect me?’ asked the little sister. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Could you not protect me?’ asked the little sister. Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Six Swans, 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/pg640/4/40/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Six Swans, sentence 40

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‘Could you not protect me?’ asked the little sister.

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** not protect, ask · **To what, where:** me, little sister · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Six Swans. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg640:4:40
# text = ‘Could you not protect me?’ asked the little sister.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	protect	protect	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
6	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
9	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	sister	sister	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **protect** | could | you |  | me |  |  |  | vn defend-72.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Beneficiary |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past |  |  | the little sister |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S»: agent=Agent sister=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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- ← previous: [sentence 39](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/4/39/)
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