---
title: If only someone would sing to him. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: If only someone would sing to him. Who acts: someone. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nightingale, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/48/153/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Yellow Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/) / [The Nightingale](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/48/) / 153

# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Nightingale, sentence 153

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
If only someone would sing to him.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** someone · **What happens:** sing · **To what, where:** Emperor

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nightingale. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (someone), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg640:48:153
# text = If only someone would sing to him.
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
2	only	only	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	someone	someone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	5	nsubj	_	_
4	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	sing	sing	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sing** *speech: express* | would | someone |  | Emperor |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V PP.recipient»: agent=Agent to he=Recipient |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 152](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/48/152/)
- next →: [sentence 154](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/48/154/)
- ↑ back to [The Nightingale](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/48/)