---
title: If you fail, my sol-diers shall kill the boy before your eyes." — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: If you fail, my sol-diers shall kill the boy before your eyes." Who acts: you, sol diers. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Story of William Tell., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Story of William Tell., sentence 21

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If you fail, my sol-diers shall kill the boy before your eyes."

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**Who acts:** you, sol diers · **What happens:** fail, kill · **To what, where:** boy

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Story of William Tell.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, sol diers), 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:pg18442:23:21
# text = If you fail, my sol-diers shall kill the boy before your eyes."
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	fail	fail	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
5	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
6	sol	sol	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	diers	dier	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
9	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	kill	kill	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	before	before	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fail** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **kill** | shall | my sol diers | the boy |  |  | before your eyes |  | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent boy=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:** «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (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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