---
title: ‘Alas!’ said she, ‘I must spin this straw into gold, and I know not… — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Alas!’ said she, ‘I must spin this straw into gold, and I know not how.’ Who acts: door, I. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Tom Thumb, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/25/114/)

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, Tom Thumb, sentence 114

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‘Alas!’ said she, ‘I must spin this straw into gold, and I know not how.’

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**Who acts:** door, I · **What happens:** say, spin, not know · **To what, where:** straw, gold · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Tom Thumb. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (door, I), 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:pg2591:25:114
# text = ‘Alas!’ said she, ‘I must spin this straw into gold, and I know not how.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Alas	alas	INTJ	UH	_	5	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	spin	spin	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	ccomp	_	_
12	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	13	det	_	_
13	straw	straw	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	into	into	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	gold	gold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
18	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
19	know	know	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	ccomp	_	_
20	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	19	advmod	_	_
21	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	19	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | door |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **spin** | must | I | this straw |  | gold |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP PP.trajectory»: agent=Agent straw=Theme into gold=Trajectory |
| 3 | **not** **know** | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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