---
title: And he scratched his head and twisted his hat. — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: And he scratched his head and twisted his hat. Who acts: M'appen. 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/pg14241/26/8/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 12, sentence 8

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And he scratched his head and twisted his hat.

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**Who acts:** M'appen · **What happens:** scratch, twist · **To what, where:** head, hat

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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 (M'appen), 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:pg14241:26:8
# text = And he scratched his head and twisted his hat.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	scratched	scratch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	twisted	twist	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
8	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	hat	hat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **scratch** | past | M'appen | M'appen's head |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=Theme |
| 2 | **twist** | past | M'appen *not said here* | M'appen's hat |  |  |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent hat=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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