---
title: “If I am to die, you must catch me first.” — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “If I am to die, you must catch me first.” Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, sentence 161

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“If I am to die, you must catch me first.”

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** die, catch · **To what, where:** youth

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg503:13:161
# text = “If I am to die, you must catch me first.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	4	mark	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	advcl	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	die	die	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
8	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	catch	catch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
11	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	_
12	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **die** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 2 | **catch** *in a quote* | must | you | the youth *= youth* |  |  |  | first *property* | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=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 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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