---
title: If you had but held out for the space of one year I should have been… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: If you had but held out for the space of one year I should have been free. Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, sentence 53

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If you had but held out for the space of one year I should have been free.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** hold out, be

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, East of the Sun and West of the Moon. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg503:4:53
# text = If you had but held out for the space of one year I should have been free.
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	held	hold	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	out	out	ADP	RP	_	5	compound:prt	_	_
7	for	for	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	space	space	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	12	nummod	_	_
12	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	_
13	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
14	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
15	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	aux	_	_
16	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	17	cop	_	_
17	free	free	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hold out** | past · perfect |  |  |  |  |  | for the space of one year | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | should · perfect | I |  |  |  |  | free *property* | tree rules |

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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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