---
title: ‘Then give me back the purse,’ said John. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Then give me back the purse,’ said John. Who acts: John. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Soldier, 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/pg7277/22/202/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Little Soldier, sentence 202

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‘Then give me back the purse,’ said John.

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**Who acts:** John · **What happens:** give back, say · **To what, where:** purse, me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Soldier. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (John), 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:pg7277:22:202
# text = ‘Then give me back the purse,’ said John.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
3	give	give	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
4	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	iobj	_	_
5	back	back	ADP	RP	_	3	compound:prt	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	purse	purse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	John	John	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give back** | infinitive |  | the purse | me |  | then |  | vn give-13.1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient purse=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | John |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that 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 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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