---
title: If you don’t, may I burn my crutch!” — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: If you don’t, may I burn my crutch!” Who acts: you, I. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Yellow Dwarf, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Yellow Dwarf, part 2, sentence 36

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If you don’t, may I burn my crutch!”

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**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** not do, burn · **To what, where:** crutch

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Yellow Dwarf, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, 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:pg503:6:36
# text = If you don’t, may I burn my crutch!”
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	do	do	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
6	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
7	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	burn	burn	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
9	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	crutch	crutch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **do** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **burn** | may | I | my crutch |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent crutch=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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