---
title: So off went the fool to his mother, and told her what the wise woman… — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: So off went the fool to his mother, and told her what the wise woman said. Who acts: wise woman. 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/pg14241/26/24/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 12, sentence 24

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So off went the fool to his mother, and told her what the wise woman said.

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**Who acts:** wise woman · **What happens:** go, tell, say · **To what, where:** fool, st · **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 (wise woman), 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:pg14241:26:24
# text = So off went the fool to his mother, and told her what the wise woman said.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	off	off	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	fool	fool	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
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	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
12	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	iobj	_	_
13	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	17	obj	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	wise	wise	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
17	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | past |  | the fool |  |  |  | to lt's mother; off *property* | vn meander-47.7 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location fool=Theme |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past |  |  | st |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP what S»: agent=Agent she=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the wise woman |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=Topic |

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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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