---
title: He spoke to her, and said, ‘Dear child, could I and my servant spend… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He spoke to her, and said, ‘Dear child, could I and my servant spend the night in this house?’ Who acts: son, I. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Riddle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Riddle, sentence 4

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He spoke to her, and said, ‘Dear child, could I and my servant spend the night in this house?’

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**Who acts:** son, I · **What happens:** speak, say, spend · **To what, where:** girl, house · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Riddle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (son, I), 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:pg7277:47:4
# text = He spoke to her, and said, ‘Dear child, could I and my servant spend the night in this house?’
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	spoke	speak	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	Dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
13	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
14	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
16	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	servant	servant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	conj	_	_
18	spend	spend	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	ccomp	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	_
21	in	in	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
22	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	23	det	_	_
23	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	18	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* | past | son |  | girl |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent to she=Co-Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | son *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **spend** | could | I |  |  | this house | night |  | vn consume-66-1 «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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