---
title: ‘What is to be the end of this?’ they said among themselves. — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What is to be the end of this?’ they said among themselves. Who acts: soldiers. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Valiant Little Tailor, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Valiant Little Tailor, sentence 77

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‘What is to be the end of this?’ they said among themselves.

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**Who acts:** soldiers · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** end · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Valiant Little Tailor. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (soldiers), 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:pg2591:19:77
# text = ‘What is to be the end of this?’ they said among themselves.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
5	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	cop	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	end	end	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	ccomp	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	among	among	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	13	obl	_	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 | **is a** | present |  | the end |  |  |  | of this | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | soldiers *= soldier* |  |  |  |  | among soldiers *= soldier* | 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:** «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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