---
title: The miller asked: ‘What did he say?’ — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The miller asked: ‘What did he say?’ Who acts: miller. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Little Peasant, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Little Peasant, sentence 55

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The miller asked: ‘What did he say?’

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**Who acts:** miller · **What happens:** ask, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Little Peasant. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (miller), 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:pg2591:28:55
# text = The miller asked: ‘What did he say?’
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	miller	miller	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	9	punct	_	_
5	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	9	obj	_	_
7	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the miller |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past · do-support | miller |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=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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