---
title: ‘I cannot and dare not tell you,’ said he. — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I cannot and dare not tell you,’ said he. Who acts: prince. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Water of Life, 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/pg2591/49/62/)

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Water of Life, sentence 62

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‘I cannot and dare not tell you,’ said he.

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**Who acts:** prince · **What happens:** not dare, not tell, say · **To what, where:** you · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Water of Life. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (prince), 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:pg2591:49:62
# text = ‘I cannot and dare not tell you,’ said he.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	3	advmod	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	dare	dare	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
7	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
8	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
9	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **dare** | infinitive | prince *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn urge-58.1-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **not** **tell** *speech: assert* | infinitive | prince *not said here* |  | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent you=Recipient |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | prince |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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