---
title: The witch told the girl what work she was to do. " — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The witch told the girl what work she was to do. " Who acts: witch. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 9, 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/pg14241/23/93/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 9, sentence 93

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The witch told the girl what work she was to do. "

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**Who acts:** witch · **What happens:** tell, be · **To what, where:** work, girl · **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 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (witch), 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:pg14241:23:93
# text = The witch told the girl what work she was to do. "
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	witch	witch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	iobj	_	_
6	what	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	7	det	_	_
7	work	work	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
8	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | the witch | what work | the girl |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent girl=Recipient work=Topic |
| 2 | **is** | past | Witch |  |  |  |  | do *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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