---
title: ‘Oh! if I could only think of some way of escaping.’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Oh! if I could only think of some way of escaping.’ Who acts: I, way. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Good Mouse, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Little Good Mouse, sentence 54

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‘Oh! if I could only think of some way of escaping.’

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**Who acts:** I, way · **What happens:** think, escape

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Good Mouse. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, way), 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:pg540:22:54
# text = ‘Oh! if I could only think of some way of escaping.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	8	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
4	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
6	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
7	only	only	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	think	think	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	11	det	_	_
11	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
12	of	of	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
13	escaping	escape	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	11	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **think** *speech: other* | could | I |  |  |  |  | of some way | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **escape** | gerund | some way *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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