---
title: The fool took off his cap and scratched his head. — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The fool took off his cap and scratched his head. Who acts: fool. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 8, 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/pg14241/22/28/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 8, sentence 28

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The fool took off his cap and scratched his head.

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**Who acts:** fool · **What happens:** take off, scratch · **To what, where:** cap, head

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fool), 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:pg14241:22:28
# text = The fool took off his cap and scratched his head.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	fool	fool	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	off	off	ADP	RP	_	3	compound:prt	_	_
5	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	cap	cap	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	scratched	scratch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
9	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take off** | past | the fool | lad's cap |  |  |  |  | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent cap=Theme |
| 2 | **scratch** | past | the fool *not said here* | lad's head |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=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:** «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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