---
title: “What should you say if anybody wanted to steal that?” — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “What should you say if anybody wanted to steal that?” Who acts: you, anybody. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Felicia and the Pot of Pinks, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Felicia and the Pot of Pinks, sentence 32

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“What should you say if anybody wanted to steal that?”

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**Who acts:** you, anybody · **What happens:** say, want, steal · **To what, where:** that · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Felicia and the Pot of Pinks. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, anybody), 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:pg503:22:32
# text = “What should you say if anybody wanted to steal that?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	5	obj	_	_
3	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
7	anybody	anybody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	8	nsubj	_	_
8	wanted	want	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	ccomp	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	steal	steal	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	xcomp	_	_
11	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | should | you |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **want** *a condition, not said to happen, in a quote* | past | anybody |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 3 | **steal** *not said to happen, in a quote* | to-infinitive | anybody *not said here* | that |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location that=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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