---
title: Fortunately, he knocked against an empty snail-shell. " — Grimm's Fairy Stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Fortunately, he knocked against an empty snail-shell. " Who acts: fellow. A sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Water of Life, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimm's Fairy Stories, The Water of Life, sentence 117

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Fortunately, he knocked against an empty snail-shell. "

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**Who acts:** fellow · **What happens:** knock · **To what, where:** empty snail shell

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This is a sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Water of Life. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fellow), 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:pg11027:17:117
# text = Fortunately, he knocked against an empty snail-shell. "
1	Fortunately	fortunately	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	knocked	knock	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	against	against	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
6	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
7	empty	empty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
8	snail	snail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	shell	shell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **knock** | past | fellow |  |  | a empty snail shell |  | fortunately *property* | vn bump-18.4-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme against shell=Location |

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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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