---
title: "Very good," said his mother, "now thou canst get a wife." — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "Very good," said his mother, "now thou canst get a wife." Who acts: mother, thou. 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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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 8, sentence 46

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"Very good," said his mother, "now thou canst get a wife."

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**Who acts:** mother, thou · **What happens:** say, get · **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 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother, thou), 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:pg14241:22:46
# text = "Very good," said his mother, "now thou canst get a wife."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Very	very	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	14	advmod	_	_
12	thou	thou	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=2|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	14	nsubj	_	_
13	canst	can	AUX	MD	Style=Arch|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	ccomp	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | husband's mother |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **get** *in a quote* | can | thou | a wife |  |  | now |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer wife=Stimulus |

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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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