---
title: ‘Oh! what wouldn’t I give to have a child as white as snow, as red a… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Oh! what wouldn’t I give to have a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony!’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Bushy Bride, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, Bushy Bride, sentence 104

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‘Oh! what wouldn’t I give to have a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony!’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** not give, have · **To what, where:** child

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Bushy Bride. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg540:47:104
# text = ‘Oh! what wouldn’t I give to have a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony!’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	4	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	0	root	_	_
5	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
7	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	give	give	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	acl:relcl	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	xcomp	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	as	as	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
15	as	as	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	snow	snow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
18	as	as	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	red	red	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	parataxis	_	_
20	as	as	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	blood	blood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	25	punct	_	_
23	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	25	cc	_	_
24	as	as	ADV	RB	_	25	advmod	_	_
25	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	parataxis	_	_
26	as	as	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
27	ebony	ebony	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
28	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	25	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
29	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **give** | would | I |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | a child |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=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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