---
title: “If you will put the millstone round my neck,” said the bird. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “If you will put the millstone round my neck,” said the bird. Who acts: you, bird. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Rose-tree, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, The Rose-tree, sentence 53

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“If you will put the millstone round my neck,” said the bird.

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**Who acts:** you, bird · **What happens:** put, say · **To what, where:** millstone · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Rose-tree. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, bird), 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:pg7439:8:53
# text = “If you will put the millstone round my neck,” said the bird.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	put	put	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	ccomp	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	millstone	millstone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	round	round	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	neck	neck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **put** *a condition, not said to happen, in a quote* | future | you | the millstone |  |  |  | round my neck | vn invest-13.5.4-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent millstone=Goal |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the bird |  |  |  |  |  | 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:** «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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