---
title: "Dang it!" said the fool, as he scratched his head. " — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "Dang it!" said the fool, as he scratched his head. " Who acts: you, fool, lad. 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/pg14241/22/69/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 8, sentence 69

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"Dang it!" said the fool, as he scratched his head. "

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**Who acts:** you, fool, lad · **What happens:** dang, say, scratch · **To what, where:** word, head · **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 (you, fool, lad), 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:pg14241:22:69
# text = "Dang it!" said the fool, as he scratched his head. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Dang	dang	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	fool	fool	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	scratched	scratch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
13	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **dang** *in a quote* | imperative | you *not said here* | word |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: express* | past | the fool |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **scratch** | past | lad | 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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