---
title: If I could only be sure of not being melted down!" — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: If I could only be sure of not being melted down!" Who acts: I. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Old Street Lamp, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Old Street Lamp, sentence 71

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If I could only be sure of not being melted down!"

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** be, not melt down

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Old Street Lamp. 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:pg27200:133:71
# text = If I could only be sure of not being melted down!"
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
4	only	only	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
5	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	cop	_	_
6	sure	sure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
7	of	of	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
8	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
9	being	be	AUX	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	10	aux:pass	_	_
10	melted	melt	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	advcl	_	_
11	down	down	ADP	RP	_	10	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | could | I |  |  |  |  | sure *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **melt down** | gerund · passive | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4-1 «NP.patient V» |

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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:** «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (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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