---
title: Tell me what I can do for you, princess, and I will do it.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Tell me what I can do for you, princess, and I will do it.’ Who acts: you, I. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy, part 1, sentence 84

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Tell me what I can do for you, princess, and I will do it.’

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**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** tell, do · **To what, where:** me, princess, step · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, I), 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:pg641:38:84
# text = Tell me what I can do for you, princess, and I will do it.’
1	Tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	1	iobj	_	_
3	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	obj	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	ccomp	_	_
7	for	for	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	princess	princess	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
13	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
14	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	conj	_	_
16	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | me |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP what S»: agent=Agent i=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **do** | can | I | princess |  |  |  | for you | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |
| 3 | **do** | future | I | step |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality |

<!-- .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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