---
title: But how shall we know if any evil thing befall him?’ — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But how shall we know if any evil thing befall him?’ Who acts: we, evil thing. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 20, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/20/57/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 20, sentence 57

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But how shall we know if any evil thing befall him?’

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**Who acts:** we, evil thing · **What happens:** know, befall · **To what, where:** man

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 20. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (we, evil thing), 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:pg5615:20:57
# text = But how shall we know if any evil thing befall him?’
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
3	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
7	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	9	det	_	_
8	evil	evil	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	befall	befall	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	ccomp	_	_
11	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** | shall | we |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **befall** *a condition, not said to happen* | infinitive | any evil thing | man |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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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