---
title: ‘Be firm, happen what may, and seek the Golden Branch.’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Be firm, happen what may, and seek the Golden Branch.’ Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Branch, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Golden Branch, part 3, sentence 46

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‘Be firm, happen what may, and seek the Golden Branch.’

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** be, happen, seek · **To what, where:** Golden Branch

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Branch, 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 (you), 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:pg540:36:46
# text = ‘Be firm, happen what may, and seek the Golden Branch.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	cop	_	_
3	firm	firm	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
5	happen	happen	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
6	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	5	obj	_	_
7	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	seek	seek	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	Golden	golden	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	Branch	branch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  | firm *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **happen** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **seek** | infinitive |  | the Golden Branch |  |  |  |  | vn hunt-35.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent branch=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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