---
title: ‘Pray tell me at once who it is, and don’t keep me in suspense!’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Pray tell me at once who it is, and don’t keep me in suspense!’ Who acts: Pray, lovely original. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine, sentence 84

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‘Pray tell me at once who it is, and don’t keep me in suspense!’

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**Who acts:** Pray, lovely original · **What happens:** tell, be, not keep · **To what, where:** me, suspense · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Pray, lovely original), 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:pg7277:12:84
# text = ‘Pray tell me at once who it is, and don’t keep me in suspense!’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Pray	Pray	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	iobj	_	_
5	at	at	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	3	obl	_	_
7	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	3	ccomp	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
9	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
12	do	do	AUX	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
14	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
15	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	14	obj	_	_
16	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	suspense	suspense	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | infinitive | Pray |  | me |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |
| 2 | **is a** | present | lovely original *= original* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **not** **keep** | infinitive · do-support | Pray *not said here* | me |  | suspense |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent i=Theme in suspense=Location |

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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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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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