---
title: Actually, there were crabs. — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Actually, there were crabs. Who acts: crabs. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Doctor Knowall, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, Doctor Knowall, sentence 24

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Actually, there were crabs.

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**Who acts:** crabs · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Doctor Knowall. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (crabs), 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:pg2591:52:24
# text = Actually, there were crabs.
1	Actually	actually	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	4	expl	_	_
4	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	crabs	crab	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | crabs |  |  | there |  | actually *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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