---
title: ‘Surely there is nothing to prevent you.’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Surely there is nothing to prevent you.’ Who acts: nothing. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine, 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/pg7277/12/74/)

<!-- 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 Green Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/) / [Prince Featherhead and the Princess Ce…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/12/) / 74

# The Green Fairy Book, Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine, sentence 74

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Surely there is nothing to prevent you.’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** nothing · **What happens:** be, prevent · **To what, where:** you

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (nothing), 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:pg7277:12:74
# text = ‘Surely there is nothing to prevent you.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Surely	surely	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
3	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	4	expl	_	_
4	is	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	4	nsubj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	prevent	prevent	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	acl	_	_
8	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | present | nothing |  |  | there |  | surely *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **prevent** | to-infinitive | nothing *not said here* | you |  |  |  |  | vn forbid-64.4-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Causer you=Theme |

<!-- .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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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 73](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/12/73/)
- next →: [sentence 75](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/12/75/)
- ↑ back to [Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/12/)