---
title: Every day the poor girl had to sit by a well, in the highway, and sp… — Grimm's Fairy Stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Every day the poor girl had to sit by a well, in the highway, and spin and spin till her fingers bled. Who acts: poor girl, spin. A sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, Mother Holle, 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/pg11027/20/3/)

<!-- 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/) / [Mother Holle](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/20/) / 3

# Grimm's Fairy Stories, Mother Holle, sentence 3

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Every day the poor girl had to sit by a well, in the highway, and spin and spin till her fingers bled.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** poor girl, spin · **What happens:** have, sit, bleed · **To what, where:** highway

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, Mother Holle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor girl, spin), 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:pg11027:20:3
# text = Every day the poor girl had to sit by a well, in the highway, and spin and spin till her fingers bled.
1	Every	every	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	2	det	_	_
2	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	sit	sit	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
9	by	by	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	well	well	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	highway	highway	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	24	cc	_	_
18	spin	spin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	nsubj	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
20	spin	spin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	conj	_	_
21	till	till	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
22	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	23	nmod:poss	_	_
23	fingers	finger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	nmod	_	_
24	bled	bleed	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | the poor girl |  |  |  | day |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **sit** | to-infinitive | the poor girl *not said here* |  |  | the highway |  | by a well | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent by well=Location |
| 3 | **bleed** | past | spin till girl's fingers and spin |  |  |  |  |  | vn substance\_emission-43.4-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Source |

<!-- .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 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/20/2/)
- next →: [sentence 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/20/4/)
- ↑ back to [Mother Holle](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/20/)