---
title: And the fool scratched his head and thought and thought, but he coul… — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: And the fool scratched his head and thought and thought, but he couldn't tell. Who acts: fool, sun. 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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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 12, sentence 97

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And the fool scratched his head and thought and thought, but he couldn't tell.

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**Who acts:** fool, sun · **What happens:** scratch, think, not tell · **To what, where:** 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 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fool, sun), 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:pg14241:26:97
# text = And the fool scratched his head and thought and thought, but he couldn't tell.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	fool	fool	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	scratched	scratch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
12	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
13	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
14	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	16	advmod	_	_
16	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **scratch** | past | the fool | sun's head |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=Theme |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* | past | the fool *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **think** *speech: other* | past | the fool *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **not** **tell** *speech: assert* | could | sun |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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