---
title: The father came, and told him any death he chose to give her to give… — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The father came, and told him any death he chose to give her to give it. Who acts: father. 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 159

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The father came, and told him any death he chose to give her to give it.

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**Who acts:** father · **What happens:** come, tell, choose, give · **To what, where:** death, father, whale · **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 (father), 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:pg7885:23:159
# text = The father came, and told him any death he chose to give her to give it.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
7	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	iobj	_	_
8	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	9	det	_	_
9	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	chose	choose	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	ccomp	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	give	give	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
14	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	iobj	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	give	give	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | the father |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | the father *not said here* | any death | father |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **choose** | past | father |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **give** | to-infinitive | father *not said here* |  | whale |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 5 | **give** | to-infinitive | father *not said here* | death |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=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:** «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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