---
title: ‘If she is so foolish as to wish to die, I can’t help it. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘If she is so foolish as to wish to die, I can’t help it. Who acts: wife, I. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Voice of Death, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Voice of Death, sentence 38

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‘If she is so foolish as to wish to die, I can’t help it.

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**Who acts:** wife, I · **What happens:** be, wish, die, not help · **To what, where:** house

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Voice of Death. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wife, 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:pg540:27:38
# text = ‘If she is so foolish as to wish to die, I can’t help it.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
3	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
4	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
5	so	so	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	foolish	foolish	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
7	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	wish	wish	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	advcl	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	die	die	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
13	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
14	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	16	advmod	_	_
16	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | wife |  |  |  |  | foolish *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **wish** | to-infinitive | wife *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V for NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 3 | **die** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | wife *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 4 | **not** **help** | can | I | house |  |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Beneficiary |

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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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