---
title: If only he could come back again! — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: If only he could come back again! Who acts: Peter. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 17, 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/pg2435/17/16/)

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 17, sentence 16

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If only he could come back again!

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**Who acts:** Peter · **What happens:** come back

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Peter), 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:pg2435:17:16
# text = If only he could come back again!
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
2	only	only	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
3	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	back	back	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
7	again	again	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come back** | could | Peter |  |  |  | again |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=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:** «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 2435 (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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