---
title: ‘“Hold on tight, little girl, if you don’t want to break your neck.” — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘“Hold on tight, little girl, if you don’t want to break your neck.” Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Vivien and the Princess Placida, part 2, 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/pg7277/37/77/)

<!-- 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 Vivien and the Princess Placida…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/37/) / 77

# The Green Fairy Book, Prince Vivien and the Princess Placida, part 2, sentence 77

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘“Hold on tight, little girl, if you don’t want to break your neck.”

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** hold on, not want, break · **To what, where:** neck

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Vivien and the Princess Placida, 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.

<!-- .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:pg7277:37:77
# text = ‘“Hold on tight, little girl, if you don’t want to break your neck.”
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	Hold	hold	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	on	on	ADP	RP	_	3	compound:prt	_	_
5	tight	tight	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
7	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
11	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	n’t	n't	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	want	want	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	break	break	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	xcomp	_	_
17	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	neck	neck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hold on** *in a quote* | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **want** *in a quote* | present · do-support | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 3 | **break** *not said to happen, in a quote* | to-infinitive | you *not said here* | your neck |  |  |  |  | vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer neck=Patient |

<!-- .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 76](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/37/76/)
- next →: [sentence 78](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/37/78/)
- ↑ back to [Prince Vivien and the Princess Placida, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/37/)