---
title: They were terrified and wanted to hide themselves. — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: They were terrified and wanted to hide themselves. Who acts: kids. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids, 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/pg2591/35/23/)

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids, sentence 23

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They were terrified and wanted to hide themselves.

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**Who acts:** kids · **What happens:** be, want, hide · **To what, where:** kids

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (kids), 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:pg2591:35:23
# text = They were terrified and wanted to hide themselves.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	terrified	terrified	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	wanted	want	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	hide	hide	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | kids *= kid* |  |  |  |  | terrified *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **want** | past | kids *= kid* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 3 | **hide** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | kids *= kid* *not said here* | kids *= kid* |  |  |  |  | vn concealment-16-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent themselves=Patient |

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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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