---
title: ‘I would touch none of it if by losing it I should never die. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I would touch none of it if by losing it I should never die. Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Sigurd, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Story of Sigurd, sentence 66

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‘I would touch none of it if by losing it I should never die.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** touch, lose, not die · **To what, where:** none, gold

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Sigurd. 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:pg540:51:66
# text = ‘I would touch none of it if by losing it I should never die.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	touch	touch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	none	none	PRON	NN	PronType=Neg	4	obj	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nmod	_	_
8	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
9	by	by	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
10	losing	lose	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	_
12	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
13	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
14	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	15	advmod	_	_
15	die	die	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **touch** | would | I | none |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme none=Co-Theme |
| 2 | **lose** *a condition, not said to happen* | gerund | I *not said here* | gold |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality |
| 3 | **not** **die** | should | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |

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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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