---
title: There stands an old tree; chop it down, and you will find something… — Grimm's Fairy Stories · tree and pragmatics
description: There stands an old tree; chop it down, and you will find something at the root." Who acts: you. A sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Golden Goose, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimm's Fairy Stories, The Golden Goose, sentence 20

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There stands an old tree; chop it down, and you will find something at the root."

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** stand, chop down, find · **To what, where:** old tree, tree, something, root

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This is a sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Golden Goose. 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.

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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:pg11027:15:20
# text = There stands an old tree; chop it down, and you will find something at the root."
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	stands	stand	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	chop	chop	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	advcl	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	down	down	ADP	RP	_	7	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
12	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
13	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	parataxis	_	_
15	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	14	obj	_	_
16	at	at	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	root	root	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | present |  | a old tree |  | there |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer tree=Stimulus |
| 2 | **chop down** | infinitive |  | tree |  |  |  |  | vn carve-21.2-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Patient |
| 3 | **find** | future | you | something |  | the root |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP PP.source NP.asset»: agent=Agent something=Theme at root=Asset |

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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:** «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 11027 (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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