---
title: Shall I cut first, or shall I sleep first? — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Shall I cut first, or shall I sleep first? Who acts: I. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Clever Elsie, 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/pg2591/32/42/)

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, Clever Elsie, sentence 42

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Shall I cut first, or shall I sleep first?

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** cut, sleep

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Clever Elsie. 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:pg2591:32:42
# text = Shall I cut first, or shall I sleep first?
1	Shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	cut	cut	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
6	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
7	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
8	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	sleep	sleep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
10	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	9	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cut** | shall | I |  |  |  |  | first *property* | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **sleep** | shall | I |  |  |  |  | first *property* | vn snooze-40.4-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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- ← previous: [sentence 41](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/32/41/)
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- ↑ back to [Clever Elsie](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/32/)