---
title: ‘Steal them if thou wilt; there is no time to go back.’ — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Steal them if thou wilt; there is no time to go back.’ Who acts: you, time. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 29, 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/pg3454/29/66/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 29, sentence 66

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‘Steal them if thou wilt; there is no time to go back.’

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**Who acts:** you, time · **What happens:** steal, be, go back · **To what, where:** tools

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 29. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, time), 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:pg3454:29:66
# text = ‘Steal them if thou wilt; there is no time to go back.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Steal	steal	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
5	thou	thou	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=2|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	6	nsubj	_	_
6	wilt	will	AUX	MD	Style=Arch|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	9	expl	_	_
9	is	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
10	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	11	det	_	_
11	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	acl	_	_
14	back	back	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **steal** | imperative | you *not said here* | tools *= tool* |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location they=Theme |
| 2 | **be** | present | no time |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **go back** | to-infinitive | no time *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn convert-26.6.2 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=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:** «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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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