---
title: ‘Father, this year you shall eat dates,’ cried he. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Father, this year you shall eat dates,’ cried he. Who acts: you, Father. 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 78

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‘Father, this year you shall eat dates,’ cried he.

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**Who acts:** you, Father · **What happens:** eat, cry · **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 (you, Father), 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:pg641:29:78
# text = ‘Father, this year you shall eat dates,’ cried he.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Father	Father	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
4	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	det	_	_
5	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	appos	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	acl:relcl	_	_
9	dates	date	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
12	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **eat** | shall | you | dates |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent date=Patient |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | Father |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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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