---
title: He listened, and heard an ant-king complain: ‘Why cannot folks, with… — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He listened, and heard an ant-king complain: ‘Why cannot folks, with their clumsy beasts, keep off our bodies? Who acts: king, ant king, folks. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The White Snake, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/34/27/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Grimms' Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/) / [The White Snake](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/34/) / 27

# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The White Snake, sentence 27

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He listened, and heard an ant-king complain: ‘Why cannot folks, with their clumsy beasts, keep off our bodies?

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** king, ant king, folks · **What happens:** listen, hear, complain, keep off · **To what, where:** ant king, bodies

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The White Snake. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (king, ant king, folks), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg2591:34:27
# text = He listened, and heard an ant-king complain: ‘Why cannot folks, with their clumsy beasts, keep off our bodies?
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	listened	listen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
6	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
7	ant	ant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
10	complain	complain	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	23	punct	_	_
12	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	23	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	23	advmod	_	_
14	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	16	advmod	_	_
16	folks	folk	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	23	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
18	with	with	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
19	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	21	nmod:poss	_	_
20	clumsy	clumsy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	beasts	beast	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	_
23	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
24	off	off	ADP	RP	_	23	compound:prt	_	_
25	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	26	nmod:poss	_	_
26	bodies	body	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	23	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **listen** | past | king |  |  |  |  |  | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **hear** | past |  | a ant king |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer king=Stimulus |
| 3 | **complain** *speech: other* | present | a ant king *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn complain-37.8 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **keep off** | infinitive | folks and folks's clumsy beasts | our bodies |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent body=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 26](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/34/26/)
- next →: [sentence 28](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/34/28/)
- ↑ back to [The White Snake](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/34/)