---
title: He was at his death-bed and can tell you everything.’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He was at his death-bed and can tell you everything.’ Who acts: husband. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Snake-leaves, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Three Snake-leaves, sentence 52

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He was at his death-bed and can tell you everything.’

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**Who acts:** husband · **What happens:** be, tell · **To what, where:** death bed, everything, you · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Snake-leaves. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (husband), 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:pg7277:46:52
# text = He was at his death-bed and can tell you everything.’
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
3	at	at	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
5	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	bed	bed	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	conj	_	_
11	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	10	iobj	_	_
12	everything	everything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Tot	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | husband |  |  | husband's death bed |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | can | husband *not said here* | everything | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent you=Recipient everything=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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