---
title: ‘Let us dig,’ said the boy. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Let us dig,’ said the boy. Who acts: us, boy. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Hassebu, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/30/21/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Violet Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/) / [The Story of Hassebu](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/30/) / 21

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Story of Hassebu, sentence 21

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Let us dig,’ said the boy.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** us, boy · **What happens:** let, dig, say · **To what, where:** us · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Hassebu. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (us, boy), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg641:30:21
# text = ‘Let us dig,’ said the boy.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Let	let	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	ccomp	_	_
3	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	dig	dig	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **let** | infinitive |  | us |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **dig** | infinitive | us *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn create-26.4-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the boy |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/30/20/)
- next →: [sentence 22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/30/22/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of Hassebu](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/30/)