---
title: If you say a word about it, it will all vanish.’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: If you say a word about it, it will all vanish.’ Who acts: you, word. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Lads, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Golden Lads, sentence 9

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If you say a word about it, it will all vanish.’

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**Who acts:** you, word · **What happens:** say, vanish · **To what, where:** word · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Lads. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, word), 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:pg7277:49:9
# text = If you say a word about it, it will all vanish.’
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	say	say	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	about	about	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
10	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
11	all	all	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	vanish	vanish	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* *a condition, not said to happen* | present | you | a word |  |  |  | about word | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent word=Topic |
| 2 | **vanish** | future | word |  |  |  |  | all *property* | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=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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