---
title: ‘To day the people may eat the dates.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘To day the people may eat the dates.’ Who acts: people. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Nunda, Eater of People, sentence 130

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‘To day the people may eat the dates.’

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**Who acts:** people · **What happens:** eat · **To what, where:** dates

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (people), 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:pg641:29:130
# text = ‘To day the people may eat the dates.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	To	to	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
3	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
6	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	dates	date	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **eat** | may | the people | the dates |  |  | day |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent date=Patient |

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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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