---
title: The old man tried to dissuade him, but he persisted in going. — Grimm's Fairy Stories · tree and pragmatics
description: The old man tried to dissuade him, but he persisted in going. Who acts: old man, man. A sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, Briar Rose, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/18/27/)

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# Grimm's Fairy Stories, Briar Rose, sentence 27

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The old man tried to dissuade him, but he persisted in going.

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**Who acts:** old man, man · **What happens:** try, dissuade, persist, go · **To what, where:** man

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This is a sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, Briar Rose. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old man, man), 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:pg11027:18:27
# text = The old man tried to dissuade him, but he persisted in going.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	dissuade	dissuade	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	persisted	persist	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
12	in	in	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
13	going	go	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	11	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | past | the old man |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **dissuade** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | the old man *not said here* |  | man |  |  |  | vn discourage-64.5 «NP V NP PP.eventuality»: agent=Causer he=Beneficiary |
| 3 | **persist** | past | man |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **go** | gerund | man *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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