---
title: They said: “Please let us in and give us something to eat.” — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: They said: “Please let us in and give us something to eat.” Who acts: man. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Molly Whuppie, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Molly Whuppie, sentence 6

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They said: “Please let us in and give us something to eat.”

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** say, let in, give, eat · **To what, where:** us, something · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Molly Whuppie. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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:pg7439:25:6
# text = They said: “Please let us in and give us something to eat.”
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	6	punct	_	_
4	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	Please	please	INTJ	UH	_	6	discourse	_	_
6	let	let	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	ccomp	_	_
7	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	RP	_	6	compound:prt	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	give	give	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
11	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	iobj	_	_
12	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	10	obj	_	_
13	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
14	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | man |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **let in** *in a quote* | infinitive |  | us |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent we=Theme |
| 3 | **give** *in a quote* | infinitive |  | something | us |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent we=Recipient something=Theme |
| 4 | **eat** *in a quote* | to-infinitive |  | something *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: 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:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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