---
title: She asked the boy "Did you tell the master what I told you to tell h… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: She asked the boy "Did you tell the master what I told you to tell him?" Who acts: whale, boy, master. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Fair, Brown, and Trembling, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7885/23/145/)

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, Fair, Brown, and Trembling, sentence 145

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She asked the boy "Did you tell the master what I told you to tell him?"

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**Who acts:** whale, boy, master · **What happens:** ask, tell · **To what, where:** boy, master · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Fair, Brown, and Trembling. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (whale, boy, master), 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:pg7885:23:145
# text = She asked the boy "Did you tell the master what I told you to tell him?"
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	Did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	ccomp	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	master	master	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	13	obj	_	_
12	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	acl:relcl	_	_
14	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	iobj	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
17	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | whale |  | the boy |  |  |  | vn urge-58.1-1-1 «NP V NP that S»: agent=Agent boy=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past · do-support | the boy *= boy* | the master |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent master=Recipient |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | whale | the master | the boy *= boy* |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **tell** *speech: assert* *not said to happen, in a quote* | to-infinitive | the master *not said here* |  | boy |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent he=Recipient |

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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:** «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7885 (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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