---
title: It is true, I have no power to undo entirely what my elder has done. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It is true, I have no power to undo entirely what my elder has done. Who acts: disaster, I, power, elder. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, sentence 18

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It is true, I have no power to undo entirely what my elder has done.

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**Who acts:** disaster, I, power, elder · **What happens:** be, have, undo, do · **To what, where:** power

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (disaster, I, power, elder), 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:pg503:10:18
# text = It is true, I have no power to undo entirely what my elder has done.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	true	true	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
7	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	8	det	_	_
8	power	power	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	undo	undo	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
11	entirely	entirely	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
12	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	16	obj	_	_
13	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	elder	elder	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
15	has	have	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
16	done	do	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	10	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | disaster |  |  |  |  | true *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** | present | I | no power |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **undo** | to-infinitive | no power *not said here* |  |  |  |  | entirely *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **do** | present · perfect | my elder |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |

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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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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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