---
title: What can we do, but lie here and starve?’ — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: What can we do, but lie here and starve?’ 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.
---

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

<!-- 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/) / 34

# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The White Snake, sentence 34

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
What can we do, but lie here and starve?’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** we · **What happens:** do, lie, starve

<!-- .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 (we), 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:pg2591:34:34
# text = What can we do, but lie here and starve?’
1	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	obj	_	_
2	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	lie	lie	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
8	here	here	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	7	advmod	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	starve	starve	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | can | we |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |
| 2 | **lie** | infinitive | we *not said here* |  |  | here |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **starve** | infinitive | we *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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 33](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/34/33/)
- next →: [sentence 35](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/34/35/)
- ↑ back to [The White Snake](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/34/)