---
title: If they aren’t finished in that time, off comes your head.’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: If they aren’t finished in that time, off comes your head.’ Who acts: off. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Biter Bit, part 3, sentence 3

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If they aren’t finished in that time, off comes your head.’

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**Who acts:** off · **What happens:** not finish, come · **To what, where:** boots, head

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (off), 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:pg7277:28:3
# text = If they aren’t finished in that time, off comes your head.’
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux:pass	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	finished	finish	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	advcl	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	det	_	_
8	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
10	off	off	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
11	comes	come	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **finish** *a condition, not said to happen* | present · passive |  | boots *= boot* |  |  | time |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: subject=Eventuality |
| 2 | **come** | present | off | your head |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location head=Theme |

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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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