---
title: ‘No,’ he answered; ‘what can it be? — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘No,’ he answered; ‘what can it be? Who acts: king, shuddering. 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 201

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‘No,’ he answered; ‘what can it be?

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**Who acts:** king, shuddering · **What happens:** answer, be

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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 (king, shuddering), 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:pg2591:57:201
# text = ‘No,’ he answered; ‘what can it be?
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	No	no	INTJ	UH	Polarity=Neg	6	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	12	punct	_	_
8	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	12	obj	_	_
10	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | king |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **can** | can | shuddering |  |  |  |  |  | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot what=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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