---
title: “If your mother only knew, Her heart would surely break in two.” — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “If your mother only knew, Her heart would surely break in two.” Who acts: mother, heart. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Goose-girl, 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/pg503/37/12/)

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Goose-girl, sentence 12

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“If your mother only knew, Her heart would surely break in two.”

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**Who acts:** mother, heart · **What happens:** know, break · **To what, where:** two · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Goose-girl. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother, heart), 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:pg503:37:12
# text = “If your mother only knew, Her heart would surely break in two.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
3	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
5	only	only	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	knew	know	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	Her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	heart	heart	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
10	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
11	surely	surely	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	break	break	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	ccomp	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** *in a quote* | past | your mother |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **break** *in a quote* | would | mother's heart |  |  | two |  | surely *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in two=Location |

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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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