---
title: ‘Nibble, nibble, gnaw, Who is nibbling at my little house?’ — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Nibble, nibble, gnaw, Who is nibbling at my little house?’ Who acts: Nibble. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Hansel and Gretel, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, Hansel and Gretel, sentence 74

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‘Nibble, nibble, gnaw, Who is nibbling at my little house?’

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**Who acts:** Nibble · **What happens:** gnaw, nibble

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Hansel and Gretel. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Nibble), 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:pg2591:20:74
# text = ‘Nibble, nibble, gnaw, Who is nibbling at my little house?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Nibble	nibble	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	nibble	nibble	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	gnaw	gnaw	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	Who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
9	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	nibbling	nibble	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	conj	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
13	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **gnaw** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn chew-39.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **nibble** | present · progressive | Nibble and nibble |  |  |  |  | at my little house | vn chew-39.2 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent at house=Patient |

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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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