---
title: I shall sink to the earth if I try to keep up with you.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: I shall sink to the earth if I try to keep up with you.’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples, sentence 157

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I shall sink to the earth if I try to keep up with you.’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** sink, try, keep up

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples. 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:pg641:7:157
# text = I shall sink to the earth if I try to keep up with you.’
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	sink	sink	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	earth	earth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
8	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	try	try	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	advcl	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	_
12	up	up	ADP	RP	_	11	compound:prt	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sink** | shall | I |  |  |  |  | to the earth | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **try** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **keep up** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with you | vn sustain-55.6 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent |

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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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