---
title: The robber took a light and began looking for it, but he could not f… — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The robber took a light and began looking for it, but he could not find it. Who acts: robber, finger. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Robber Bridegroom, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Robber Bridegroom, sentence 40

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The robber took a light and began looking for it, but he could not find it.

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**Who acts:** robber, finger · **What happens:** take, begin, look, not find · **To what, where:** light

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Robber Bridegroom. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (robber, finger), 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:pg2591:24:40
# text = The robber took a light and began looking for it, but he could not find it.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	robber	robber	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	light	light	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
8	looking	look	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	xcomp	_	_
9	for	for	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
12	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
13	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
14	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
15	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	16	advmod	_	_
16	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | the robber | a light |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent light=Theme |
| 2 | **begin** | past | the robber *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **look** | gerund | the robber *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for light | vn rummage-35.5 «NP V PP.location PP.theme»: agent=Agent for it=Theme |
| 4 | **not** **find** | could | finger | light |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Topic |

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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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