---
title: If I did but know what it was to shudder!’ — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: If I did but know what it was to shudder!’ Who acts: I, fancy. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was, sentence 161

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If I did but know what it was to shudder!’

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**Who acts:** I, fancy · **What happens:** know, be · **To what, where:** shudder

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, fancy), 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:pg2591:57:161
# text = If I did but know what it was to shudder!’
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	5	obj	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
8	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	shudder	shudder	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** | past · do-support | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer what=Stimulus |
| 2 | **is a** | past | fancy | shudder |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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