---
title: ‘Alas, wife! why should you wish to be emperor?’ said the fisherman. — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Alas, wife! why should you wish to be emperor?’ said the fisherman. Who acts: you. 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 62

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‘Alas, wife! why should you wish to be emperor?’ said the fisherman.

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** wish, be, say · **To what, where:** emperor, fisherman · **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 (you), 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:pg2591:11:62
# text = ‘Alas, wife! why should you wish to be emperor?’ said the fisherman.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Alas	alas	INTJ	UH	_	9	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	vocative	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
6	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	9	advmod	_	_
7	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
8	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	wish	wish	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	ccomp	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
11	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	cop	_	_
12	emperor	emperor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
15	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	fisherman	fisherman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wish** | should | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V for NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot |
| 2 | **is a** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | you *not said here* | emperor |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the fisherman |  |  |  |  | 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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