---
title: We must shift for ourselves, and yet we cannot fly! — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: We must shift for ourselves, and yet we cannot fly! Who acts: We. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The White Snake, 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/pg2591/34/33/)

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The White Snake, sentence 33

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We must shift for ourselves, and yet we cannot fly!

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**Who acts:** We · **What happens:** shift, not fly

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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 (We), 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:pg2591:34:33
# text = We must shift for ourselves, and yet we cannot fly!
1	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	shift	shift	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	for	for	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	ourselves	ourselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
8	yet	yet	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
9	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
10	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	12	advmod	_	_
12	fly	fly	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **shift** | must | We |  |  |  |  | for ourselves | vn caused\_calibratable\_cos-45.6.2-1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **not** **fly** | can | we |  |  |  | yet |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «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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