---
title: I had better take it off and eat it.’ — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: I had better take it off and eat it.’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Clever Gretel, 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/pg2591/26/17/)

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, Clever Gretel, sentence 17

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I had better take it off and eat it.’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** have, take off, eat · **To what, where:** One

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Clever Gretel. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg2591:26:17
# text = I had better take it off and eat it.’
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	2	xcomp	_	_
4	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	_
6	off	off	ADP	RP	_	4	compound:prt	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | I |  |  |  |  | good *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **take off** | infinitive | I *not said here* | One |  |  |  |  | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 3 | **eat** | infinitive | I *not said here* | One |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=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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