---
title: One day, Jan said to his wife, "Wife can you milk-y?" — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: One day, Jan said to his wife, "Wife can you milk-y?" Who acts: Jan, wife. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 1, 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/pg14241/15/70/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 1, sentence 70

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One day, Jan said to his wife, "Wife can you milk-y?"

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**Who acts:** Jan, wife · **What happens:** say, y · **To what, where:** wife · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Jan, wife), 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:pg14241:15:70
# text = One day, Jan said to his wife, "Wife can you milk-y?"
1	One	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	nummod	_	_
2	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	Jan	January	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
10	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	Wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	ccomp	_	_
12	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
13	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
14	milk	milk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	y	y	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | Jan |  | farmer's wife |  | day |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to wife=Recipient |
| 2 | **y** *in a quote* | can | farmer's wife *= wife* |  |  |  |  |  | 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:** «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 14241 (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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