---
title: Now, it was the little old man who caused him this mischief. — Grimm's Fairy Stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Now, it was the little old man who caused him this mischief. Who acts: wound, little old man. A sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Golden Goose, 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/pg11027/15/8/)

<!-- 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/) / [Grimm's Fairy Stories](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/) / [The Golden Goose](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/15/) / 8

# Grimm's Fairy Stories, The Golden Goose, sentence 8

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Now, it was the little old man who caused him this mischief.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** wound, little old man · **What happens:** be, cause · **To what, where:** little old man, mischief, man

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (wound, little old man), 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:pg11027:15:8
# text = Now, it was the little old man who caused him this mischief.
1	Now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
6	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
7	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
9	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
10	caused	cause	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	_
11	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	iobj	_	_
12	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	13	det	_	_
13	mischief	mischief	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | wound | the little old man |  |  | now |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **cause** | past | the little old man | this mischief | man |  |  |  | vn engender-27.1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Causer he=Theme mischief=Eventuality |

<!-- .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:** «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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/15/7/)
- next →: [sentence 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/15/9/)
- ↑ back to [The Golden Goose](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/15/)