---
title: ‘Would not you like,’ said he, ‘to be a tailor?’ — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Would not you like,’ said he, ‘to be a tailor?’ Who acts: you, man. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Four Clever Brothers, 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/pg2591/43/19/)

<!-- 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 Four Clever Brothers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/43/) / 19

# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Four Clever Brothers, sentence 19

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Would not you like,’ said he, ‘to be a tailor?’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you, man · **What happens:** not like, say, be · **To what, where:** tailor · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Four Clever Brothers. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, man), 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:pg2591:43:19
# text = ‘Would not you like,’ said he, ‘to be a tailor?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	like	like	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
11	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
13	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	cop	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	tailor	tailor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **like** | would | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | man |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **is a** | to-infinitive |  | a tailor |  |  |  |  | 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 18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/43/18/)
- next →: [sentence 20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/43/20/)
- ↑ back to [The Four Clever Brothers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/43/)