---
title: Catch it if you can!" he said. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Catch it if you can!" he said. Who acts: you, king. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Kingdoms., 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/pg18442/43/26/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Kingdoms., sentence 26

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Catch it if you can!" he said.

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**Who acts:** you, king · **What happens:** catch, say · **To what, where:** orange · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Kingdoms.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, king), 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:pg18442:43:26
# text = Catch it if you can!" he said.
1	Catch	catch	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	obj	_	_
3	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	1	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **catch** | imperative | you *not said here* | orange |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | king |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=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:** «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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- ← previous: [sentence 25](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/43/25/)
- next →: [sentence 27](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/43/27/)
- ↑ back to [The Kingdoms.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/43/)