---
title: ‘If I weren’t to help you, you’d never guess. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘If I weren’t to help you, you’d never guess. Who acts: I, you. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Biter Bit, part 2, sentence 112

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‘If I weren’t to help you, you’d never guess.

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**Who acts:** I, you · **What happens:** not help, not guess · **To what, where:** you

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, 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 (I, 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:pg7277:27:112
# text = ‘If I weren’t to help you, you’d never guess.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
4	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’d	'd	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	guess	guess	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **help** | past | I |  | you |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent you=Beneficiary |
| 2 | **not** **guess** | present | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn conjecture-29.5-1 «NP V that S»: 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 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.

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