---
title: Shall I tell him that Bedouins drove me away, and when I returned th… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Shall I tell him that Bedouins drove me away, and when I returned there were no dates? Who acts: I, Bedouins, dates. 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 23

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Shall I tell him that Bedouins drove me away, and when I returned there were no dates?

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**Who acts:** I, Bedouins, dates · **What happens:** tell, drive away, return, be · **To what, where:** storm, me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (I, Bedouins, dates), 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:pg641:29:23
# text = Shall I tell him that Bedouins drove me away, and when I returned there were no dates?
1	Shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	iobj	_	_
5	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
6	Bedouins	bedouin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	drove	drive	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	advcl	_	_
8	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	away	away	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
12	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	14	advmod	_	_
13	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	returned	return	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
15	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	16	expl	_	_
16	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	conj	_	_
17	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	18	det	_	_
18	dates	date	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | shall | I |  | storm |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent he=Recipient |
| 2 | **drive away** | past | Bedouins | me |  |  |  | away *property* | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Theme |
| 3 | **return** | past | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **be** | past | no dates |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=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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