---
title: You little imp, how will you help us?" they said. " — Grimm's Fairy Stories · tree and pragmatics
description: You little imp, how will you help us?" they said. " Who acts: You, thieves. A sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Water of Life, 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/pg11027/17/127/)

<!-- 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 Water of Life](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/17/) / 127

# Grimm's Fairy Stories, The Water of Life, sentence 127

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
You little imp, how will you help us?" they said. "

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** You, thieves · **What happens:** imp, help, say · **To what, where:** us · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (You, thieves), 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:pg11027:17:127
# text = You little imp, how will you help us?" they said. "
1	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	imp	imp	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
5	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	8	advmod	_	_
6	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	appos	_	_
9	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **imp** |  | You |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **help** | future | you |  | us |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent we=Beneficiary |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | thieves *= thief* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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 126](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/17/126/)
- next →: [sentence 128](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/17/128/)
- ↑ back to [The Water of Life](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/17/)