---
title: ‘Is it possible to catch them?’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Is it possible to catch them?’ Who acts: it. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Death of Koshchei the Deathless, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Death of Koshchei the Deathless, sentence 141

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‘Is it possible to catch them?’

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**Who acts:** it · **What happens:** be, catch · **To what, where:** Marya

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Death of Koshchei the Deathless. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (it), 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:pg540:7:141
# text = ‘Is it possible to catch them?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	possible	possible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	catch	catch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	csubj	_	_
7	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | it |  |  |  |  | possible *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **catch** | to-infinitive |  | Marya |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=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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