---
title: ‘The dream may have been true,’ said the king. — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘The dream may have been true,’ said the king. Who acts: dream. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Blue Light, 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/pg2591/46/53/)

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Blue Light, sentence 53

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‘The dream may have been true,’ said the king.

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**Who acts:** dream · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** king · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Blue Light. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (dream), 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:pg2591:46:53
# text = ‘The dream may have been true,’ said the king.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	dream	dream	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
4	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
5	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	aux	_	_
6	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	7	cop	_	_
7	true	true	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | may · perfect | the dream |  |  |  |  | true *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the king |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent king=Topic |

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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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- ← previous: [sentence 52](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/46/52/)
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