---
title: "What's a wee, wee mannie to do, Wi' such a big contrairy Coo?" — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "What's a wee, wee mannie to do, Wi' such a big contrairy Coo?" Who acts: Wi. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 16, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 16, sentence 136

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"What's a wee, wee mannie to do, Wi' such a big contrairy Coo?"

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**Who acts:** Wi · **What happens:** be, do, coo · **To what, where:** wee

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wi), 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:pg14241:30:136
# text = "What's a wee, wee mannie to do, Wi' such a big contrairy Coo?"
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	5	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	wee	wee	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	wee	wee	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	mannie	mannie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	appos	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
12	Wi	Wi	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	18	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	'	's	PART	POS	_	12	case	_	_
14	such	such	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	18	det:predet	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
16	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
17	contrairy	contrairy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	compound	_	_
18	Coo	coo	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	18	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | present |  | a wee |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **do** *in a quote* | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **coo** *in a quote* |  | Wi |  |  |  |  |  | nom coo «event intransitive»: poss=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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