---
title: "But," says he, scratching his head, "how can I do that?" — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "But," says he, scratching his head, "how can I do that?" Who acts: I. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 12, 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/pg14241/26/20/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 12, sentence 20

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"But," says he, scratching his head, "how can I do that?"

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** say, scratch, do · **To what, where:** lt, head, that · **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 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg14241:26:20
# text = "But," says he, scratching his head, "how can I do that?"
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
5	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	scratching	scratch	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	advcl	_	_
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	,	_	16	punct	_	_
12	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	16	advmod	_	_
14	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
15	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	ccomp	_	_
17	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	16	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: ask* | present |  | lt |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **scratch** | gerund |  | lt's head |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=Theme |
| 3 | **do** *in a quote* | can | I | that |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent that=Eventuality |

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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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