---
title: Let the pretty birds each give me a feather!” — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: Let the pretty birds each give me a feather!” Who acts: you, pretty birds. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 11, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 11, sentence 42

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Let the pretty birds each give me a feather!”

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**Who acts:** you, pretty birds · **What happens:** let, give · **To what, where:** feather, me

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This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 11. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, pretty birds), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg74064:11:45
# text = Let the pretty birds each give me a feather!”
1	Let	let	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	pretty	pretty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
5	each	each	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	6	advmod	_	_
6	give	give	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	parataxis	_	_
7	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	iobj	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	feather	feather	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **let** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V PP.recipient»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **give** | present | the pretty birds | a feather | me |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient feather=Theme |

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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 grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Project Gutenberg book 74064 (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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- ← previous: [sentence 41](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/11/41/)
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- ↑ back to [Opening, part 11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/11/)