---
title: He refused to take it till he had delivered his message and told all… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He refused to take it till he had delivered his message and told all to the master. Who acts: cowboy. 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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# Celtic Fairy Tales, Fair, Brown, and Trembling, sentence 151

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He refused to take it till he had delivered his message and told all to the master.

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**Who acts:** cowboy · **What happens:** refuse, not take, deliver, tell · **To what, where:** drink, message, 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 (cowboy), 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:pg7885:23:151
# text = He refused to take it till he had delivered his message and told all to the master.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	refused	refuse	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	_
6	till	till	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	delivered	deliver	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
10	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	message	message	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
14	all	all	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
15	to	to	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	master	master	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **refuse** | past | cowboy |  |  |  |  |  | vn reject-77.2 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **take** | to-infinitive | cowboy *not said here* | drink |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 3 | **deliver** | past · perfect | cowboy | cowboy's message |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent message=Patient |
| 4 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | cowboy *not said here* | the master |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent master=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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