---
title: ‘Give me the paper that I may sign it,’ and they obeyed. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Give me the paper that I may sign it,’ and they obeyed. Who acts: you, paper, strangers. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Heart of Ice, part 1, 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/pg7277/14/46/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, Heart of Ice, part 1, sentence 46

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‘Give me the paper that I may sign it,’ and they obeyed.

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**Who acts:** you, paper, strangers · **What happens:** give, sign, obey · **To what, where:** paper, me

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Heart of Ice, 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, paper, strangers), 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:pg7277:14:46
# text = ‘Give me the paper that I may sign it,’ and they obeyed.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Give	give	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	paper	paper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
6	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	9	nsubj	_	_
7	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	sign	sign	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	acl:relcl	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	obeyed	obey	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give** | imperative | you *not said here* | the paper | me |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient paper=Theme |
| 2 | **sign** | may | the paper | paper |  |  |  |  | vn image\_impression-25.1 «NP V NP.destination»: agent=Agent it=Destination |
| 3 | **obey** | past | strangers *= stranger* |  |  |  |  |  | vn abide\_by-93.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |

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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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