---
title: "But if I can't?" said Jack. — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "But if I can't?" said Jack. Who acts: Jack. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 19, 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/pg14241/33/126/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 19, sentence 126

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"But if I can't?" said Jack.

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**Who acts:** Jack · **What happens:** say · **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 19. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Jack), 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:pg14241:33:126
# text = "But if I can't?" said Jack.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
3	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	Jack	Jack	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Jack |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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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