---
title: The sexton’s wife waited a long time for her husband, but he did not… — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The sexton’s wife waited a long time for her husband, but he did not come back. Who acts: wife, sexton. 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 31

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The sexton’s wife waited a long time for her husband, but he did not come back.

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**Who acts:** wife, sexton · **What happens:** wait, not come back

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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 (wife, sexton), 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:pg2591:57:31
# text = The sexton’s wife waited a long time for her husband, but he did not come back.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	sexton	sexton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	’s	's	PART	POS	_	2	case	_	_
4	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	waited	wait	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:unmarked	_	_
9	for	for	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	husband	husband	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
13	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
14	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
15	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
16	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	17	advmod	_	_
17	come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
18	back	back	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wait** | past | the sexton's wife |  |  |  | time | for wife's husband | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **come back** | past · do-support | sexton |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «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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