---
title: ‘If you were to try from morning till night you couldn’t do it. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘If you were to try from morning till night you couldn’t do it. Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Prince, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Grateful Prince, part 2, sentence 34

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‘If you were to try from morning till night you couldn’t do it.

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** try, not do · **To what, where:** care

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Prince, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg641:10:34
# text = ‘If you were to try from morning till night you couldn’t do it.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
4	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	try	try	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	from	from	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	morning	morning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
9	till	till	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
11	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
12	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
14	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	parataxis	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | past | you |  |  |  | morning |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **not** **do** | could | you | care |  |  | night |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality |

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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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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