---
title: I could tell you that," cried Thumbling, interrupting them. " — Grimm's Fairy Stories · tree and pragmatics
description: I could tell you that," cried Thumbling, interrupting them. " Who acts: I. 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 121

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I could tell you that," cried Thumbling, interrupting them. "

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** tell, cry, thumbl, interrupt · **To what, where:** you, gold · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (I), 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:pg11027:17:121
# text = I could tell you that," cried Thumbling, interrupting them. "
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	iobj	_	_
5	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	4	nmod:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	_
8	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
9	Thumbling	thumbl	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	interrupting	interrupt	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	conj	_	_
12	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
14	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | could | I |  | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent you=Recipient |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* *in a quote* | past | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **thumbl** *in a quote* | gerund | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **interrupt** *in a quote* | gerund | I *not said here* | gold |  |  |  |  | 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:** «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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