---
title: "What is it you have for dinner, dear mother?" he inquired. — Grimm's Fairy Stories · tree and pragmatics
description: "What is it you have for dinner, dear mother?" he inquired. Who acts: hearth, sword. A sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Travels of Tom Thumb, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimm's Fairy Stories, The Travels of Tom Thumb, sentence 7

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"What is it you have for dinner, dear mother?" he inquired.

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**Who acts:** hearth, sword · **What happens:** be, inquire · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Travels of Tom Thumb. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (hearth, sword), 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:pg11027:22:7
# text = "What is it you have for dinner, dear mother?" he inquired.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	obj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	ccomp	_	_
7	for	for	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	dinner	dinner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
14	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	inquired	inquire	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | present | hearth |  |  |  |  | for dinner and dear mother; have *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **inquire** *speech: other* | past | sword |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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