---
title: But I forbid you on pain of death to look at what it contains.’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But I forbid you on pain of death to look at what it contains.’ Who acts: I, death. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Graciosa and Percinet, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, Graciosa and Percinet, part 3, sentence 19

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But I forbid you on pain of death to look at what it contains.’

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**Who acts:** I, death · **What happens:** forbid, look, contain, pain · **To what, where:** you, pain, death

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Graciosa and Percinet, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, death), 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:pg540:25:19
# text = But I forbid you on pain of death to look at what it contains.’
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	forbid	forbid	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	on	on	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	pain	pain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	look	look	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	obl	_	_
13	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	contains	contain	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **forbid** | present | I | you |  | pain of death |  |  | vn forbid-64.4-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Causer you=Theme |
| 2 | **look** | to-infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at what=Theme |
| 3 | **contain** | present | death |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprise-107.2-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot |
| 4 | **pain** |  |  | death |  |  |  |  | nom pain «state transitive»: of=patient |

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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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