---
title: ‘We will try to do so, at least,’ said his wife. — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘We will try to do so, at least,’ said his wife. Who acts: We. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Fisherman and His Wife, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Fisherman and His Wife, sentence 22

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‘We will try to do so, at least,’ said his wife.

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**Who acts:** We · **What happens:** try, do, say · **To what, where:** least, wife · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Fisherman and His Wife. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We), 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:pg2591:11:22
# text = ‘We will try to do so, at least,’ said his wife.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	try	try	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	ccomp	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	so	so	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	at	at	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	least	least	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | future | We |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **do** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | We *not said here* |  |  | least |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | fisherman's wife |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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:** «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 2591 (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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