---
title: "Kind sir, if the truth I must tell, At the sign of the 'Broken Ladl… — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "Kind sir, if the truth I must tell, At the sign of the 'Broken Ladle' I dwell." Who acts: truth, hand. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 18, 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/pg14241/32/4/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 18, sentence 4

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"Kind sir, if the truth I must tell, At the sign of the 'Broken Ladle' I dwell."

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**Who acts:** truth, hand · **What happens:** tell, dwell · **To what, where:** Kind sir · **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 18. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (truth, hand), 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:pg14241:32:4
# text = "Kind sir, if the truth I must tell, At the sign of the 'Broken Ladle' I dwell."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Kind	kind	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	sir	sir	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
5	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	truth	truth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
8	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	At	at	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	sign	sign	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	parataxis	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
17	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	22	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	Broken	broken	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	Ladle	Ladle	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	22	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	'	's	PART	POS	_	19	case	_	_
21	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	22	nsubj	_	_
22	dwell	dwell	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | must | the truth | Kind sir |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **dwell** *in a quote* | present | hand |  |  |  |  | 's Broken Ladle | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=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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