---
title: If I had you in my hands, I would wring your neck!" — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: If I had you in my hands, I would wring your neck!" Who acts: I. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The King and His Hawk., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The King and His Hawk., sentence 48

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If I had you in my hands, I would wring your neck!"

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** have, wring · **To what, where:** you, hands, neck

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The King and His Hawk.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg18442:41:48
# text = If I had you in my hands, I would wring your neck!"
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	hands	hand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	wring	wring	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
12	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	neck	neck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** *a condition, not said to happen* | past | I | you |  | my hands |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent you=Patient |
| 2 | **wring** | would | I | your neck |  |  |  |  | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent neck=Patient |

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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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