---
title: ‘Tell me at once what you want to do with it, or I will draw my swor… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Tell me at once what you want to do with it, or I will draw my sword, and cut off your head!’ Who acts: you, I. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tinder-box, 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/pg640/46/64/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Tinder-box, sentence 64

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‘Tell me at once what you want to do with it, or I will draw my sword, and cut off your head!’

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**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** tell, want, do, draw, cut off · **To what, where:** me, sword, head · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tinder-box. 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), 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:pg640:46:64
# text = ‘Tell me at once what you want to do with it, or I will draw my sword, and cut off your head!’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	_
4	at	at	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	6	advmod	_	_
6	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	2	obl	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	want	want	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	acl:relcl	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	xcomp	_	_
11	with	with	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
14	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
15	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
16	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
17	draw	draw	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
18	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	19	nmod:poss	_	_
19	sword	sword	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
21	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
22	cut	cut	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	advcl	_	_
23	off	off	ADP	RP	_	22	compound:prt	_	_
24	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	25	nmod:poss	_	_
25	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | me |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |
| 2 | **want** | present | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 3 | **do** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with box | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **draw** | future | I | my sword |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sword=Theme |
| 5 | **cut off** | infinitive | you *not said here* | your head |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Affector head=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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