---
title: The father thought to himself, ‘Can it be Ashputtel?’ — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The father thought to himself, ‘Can it be Ashputtel?’ Who acts: father, tree. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Miser in the Bush, 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/pg2591/33/108/)

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Miser in the Bush, sentence 108

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The father thought to himself, ‘Can it be Ashputtel?’

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**Who acts:** father, tree · **What happens:** think, be · **To what, where:** father, Ashputtel

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Miser in the Bush. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (father, tree), 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:pg2591:33:108
# text = The father thought to himself, ‘Can it be Ashputtel?’
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	Can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	cop	_	_
11	Ashputtel	Ashputtel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **think** *speech: other* | past | the father |  | father |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** | can | tree | Ashputtel |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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