---
title: Let it eat the camel: let it even eat a man.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Let it eat the camel: let it even eat a man.’ Who acts: you, owner. 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 158

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Let it eat the camel: let it even eat a man.’

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**Who acts:** you, owner · **What happens:** let, eat · **To what, where:** owner, camel, man

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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 (you, owner), 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:pg641:29:158
# text = Let it eat the camel: let it even eat a man.’
1	Let	let	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	obj	_	_
3	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	xcomp	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	camel	camel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	7	punct	_	_
7	let	let	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	1	conj	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	even	even	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	eat	eat	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **let** | imperative | you *not said here* | owner |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **eat** | infinitive | owner *not said here* | the camel |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent camel=Patient |
| 3 | **let** | infinitive | you *not said here* | owner |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 4 | **eat** | present | you *not said here* | a man |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent man=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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