---
title: Then the woodman laughed, and said, ‘How can that be? you cannot rea… — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Then the woodman laughed, and said, ‘How can that be? you cannot reach up to the horse’s bridle.’ Who acts: woodman, you. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Tom Thumb, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/25/12/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Grimms' Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/) / [Tom Thumb](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/25/) / 12

# Grimms' Fairy Tales, Tom Thumb, sentence 12

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Then the woodman laughed, and said, ‘How can that be? you cannot reach up to the horse’s bridle.’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** woodman, you · **What happens:** laugh, say, not reach up · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (woodman, you), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg2591:25:12
# text = Then the woodman laughed, and said, ‘How can that be? you cannot reach up to the horse’s bridle.’
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	woodman	woodman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	laughed	laugh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	11	advmod	_	_
11	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	ccomp	_	_
12	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	13	nsubj	_	_
13	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
15	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
16	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	18	advmod	_	_
18	reach	reach	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	ccomp	_	_
19	up	up	ADP	RP	_	18	compound:prt	_	_
20	to	to	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	’s	's	PART	POS	_	22	case	_	_
24	bridle	bridle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **laugh** | past | the woodman |  |  |  | then |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the woodman *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **not** **reach up** | can | you |  |  |  |  | to the horse's bridle | vn body\_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/25/11/)
- next →: [sentence 13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/25/13/)
- ↑ back to [Tom Thumb](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/25/)