---
title: I wet my fingers with my lips, as I draw the thread from the distaff." — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: I wet my fingers with my lips, as I draw the thread from the distaff." Who acts: I. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 17, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 17, sentence 8

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I wet my fingers with my lips, as I draw the thread from the distaff."

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** wet, draw · **To what, where:** fingers, thread, distaff

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 17. 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:pg14241:31:8
# text = I wet my fingers with my lips, as I draw the thread from the distaff."
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	wet	wet	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	fingers	finger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
5	with	with	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	lips	lip	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
10	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	draw	draw	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	thread	thread	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	from	from	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	distaff	distaff	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wet** | present | I | my fingers |  |  |  | with my lips | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent finger=Patient with lip=Instrument |
| 2 | **draw** | present | I | the thread |  | the distaff |  |  | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP PP.initial\_location»: agent=Agent thread=Theme from distaff=Initial\_Location |

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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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