---
title: If one is young one never grows old, and if one is old one becomes y… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: If one is young one never grows old, and if one is old one becomes young. Who acts: one young one, one, old one. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks, sentence 146

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
If one is young one never grows old, and if one is old one becomes young.

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**Who acts:** one young one, one, old one · **What happens:** be, not grow, become · **To what, where:** one young one

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (one young one, one, old one), 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:pg503:28:146
# text = If one is young one never grows old, and if one is old one becomes young.
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
2	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	5	nummod	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
6	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
7	grows	grow	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
11	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
12	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	nsubj	_	_
13	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
14	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
16	becomes	become	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
17	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | one young one |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **grow** | present | one young one |  |  |  |  | old *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **is** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | one |  |  |  |  | old *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **become** | present | old one |  |  |  |  | young *property* | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient |

<!-- .note -->
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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