---
title: The mayor, however, said: ‘But my servant must go first.’ — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The mayor, however, said: ‘But my servant must go first.’ Who acts: mayor, servant. 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 64

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The mayor, however, said: ‘But my servant must go first.’

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**Who acts:** mayor, servant · **What happens:** say, go · **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 (mayor, servant), 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:pg2591:28:64
# text = The mayor, however, said: ‘But my servant must go first.’
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	mayor	mayor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	however	however	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	_
8	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
10	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	servant	servant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
12	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	ccomp	_	_
14	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	13	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	13	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 | the mayor |  |  |  |  | however *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **go** | must | my servant |  |  |  |  | first *property* | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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