---
title: But the boy struggled to be free, saying ‘Dear father, put me down. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the boy struggled to be free, saying ‘Dear father, put me down. Who acts: boy, Dear father. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Halfman, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Story of Halfman, sentence 205

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But the boy struggled to be free, saying ‘Dear father, put me down.

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**Who acts:** boy, Dear father · **What happens:** struggle, be, say, put down · **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 Story of Halfman. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boy, Dear 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:pg641:41:205
# text = But the boy struggled to be free, saying ‘Dear father, put me down.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	struggled	struggle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
6	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	cop	_	_
7	free	free	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	saying	say	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
10	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	Dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
14	put	put	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
15	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	14	obj	_	_
16	down	down	ADP	RP	_	14	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **struggle** | past | the boy |  |  |  |  |  | vn battle-36.4 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | to-infinitive | the boy *not said here* |  |  |  |  | free *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | gerund | the boy *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **put down** | infinitive | Dear father |  | me |  |  |  | vn invest-13.5.4-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent i=Goal |

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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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