---
title: Tell him these two ruffians are beating me black and blue.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Tell him these two ruffians are beating me black and blue.’ Who acts: you, two ruffians. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Two in a Sack, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, Two in a Sack, sentence 64

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Tell him these two ruffians are beating me black and blue.’

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**Who acts:** you, two ruffians · **What happens:** tell, beat · **To what, where:** bathroom, me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Two in a Sack. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, two ruffians), 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:pg641:17:64
# text = Tell him these two ruffians are beating me black and blue.’
1	Tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	iobj	_	_
3	these	this	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	5	det	_	_
4	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	5	nummod	_	_
5	ruffians	ruffian	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
6	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	beating	beat	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	1	ccomp	_	_
8	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	xcomp	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	blue	blue	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	1	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* |  | bathroom |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent he=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **beat** | present · progressive | this two ruffians | me |  |  |  | black *property* | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location i=Theme |

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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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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