---
title: But then I be a fool, that's true." — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But then I be a fool, that's true." Who acts: I, that. 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/pg14241/22/30/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 8, sentence 30

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But then I be a fool, that's true."

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**Who acts:** I, that · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** fool

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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 (I, that), 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:pg14241:22:30
# text = But then I be a fool, that's true."
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	6	advmod	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	cop	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	fool	fool	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	true	true	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | infinitive | I | a fool |  |  | then |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | present | that |  |  |  |  | true *property* | 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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