---
title: If he had cursed before, his curses were enough to raise the hair on… — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: If he had cursed before, his curses were enough to raise the hair on your head. Who acts: fishing, curses. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 18, 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/pg14241/32/97/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 18, sentence 97

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If he had cursed before, his curses were enough to raise the hair on your head.

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**Who acts:** fishing, curses · **What happens:** curse, be, raise · **To what, where:** hair, head

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 18. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fishing, curses), 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:pg14241:32:97
# text = If he had cursed before, his curses were enough to raise the hair on your head.
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	4	mark	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	cursed	curse	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	10	advcl	_	_
5	before	before	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
7	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	curses	curse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
9	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	enough	enough	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	raise	raise	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	advcl	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	hair	hair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
15	on	on	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **curse** *a condition, not said to happen* | past · perfect | fishing |  |  |  |  | before *property* | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | past | fishing's curses |  |  |  |  | enough *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **raise** | to-infinitive | fishing's curses *not said here* | the hair |  | your head |  |  | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent hair=Theme on head=Destination |
| 4 | **curse** |  | fishing |  |  |  |  |  | nom curse «communication transitive»: poss=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:** «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 14241 (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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