---
title: ‘Will you take me for a wife?’ she asked. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Will you take me for a wife?’ she asked. Who acts: you, mother. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Frog, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/36/52/)

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Frog, sentence 52

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‘Will you take me for a wife?’ she asked.

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**Who acts:** you, mother · **What happens:** take, ask · **To what, where:** me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Frog. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, mother), 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:pg641:36:52
# text = ‘Will you take me for a wife?’ she asked.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	ccomp	_	_
5	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	_
6	for	for	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
11	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | future | you | me |  |  |  | for a wife | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP PP.beneficiary»: agent=Agent i=Theme for wife=Beneficiary |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | mother |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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