---
title: And God forbid it should be so,” said Mr. Fox. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: And God forbid it should be so,” said Mr. Fox. Who acts: God. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Be Bold, Be Bold, But Not Too Bold., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Be Bold, Be Bold, But Not Too Bold., sentence 10

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And God forbid it should be so,” said Mr. Fox.

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**Who acts:** God · **What happens:** forbid, be, say · **To what, where:** gallery, Mr. Fox · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Be Bold, Be Bold, But Not Too Bold.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (God), 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:pg7439:33:10
# text = And God forbid it should be so,” said Mr. Fox.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	God	God	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	forbid	forbid	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	cop	_	_
7	so	so	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	Mr.	Mr.	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	_
12	Fox	fox	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **forbid** | infinitive | God | gallery |  |  |  |  | vn forbid-64.4-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Causer it=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | should |  |  |  |  |  | so *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past |  | Mr. Fox |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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