---
title: ‘What is it that you are always muttering between your teeth?’ — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What is it that you are always muttering between your teeth?’ Who acts: you. 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 85

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‘What is it that you are always muttering between your teeth?’

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** be, mutter · **To what, where:** figure

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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 (you), 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:pg2591:57:85
# text = ‘What is it that you are always muttering between your teeth?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	0	root	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
5	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
7	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
8	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	9	advmod	_	_
9	muttering	mutter	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	advcl	_	_
10	between	between	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	teeth	tooth	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | figure |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **mutter** *speech: assert* | present · progressive | you |  |  |  |  | between your teeth; always *property* | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: 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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