---
title: ‘But what are we to do now?’ said the coal. — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘But what are we to do now?’ said the coal. Who acts: we. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean, sentence 10

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‘But what are we to do now?’ said the coal.

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**Who acts:** we · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** coal · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (we), 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:pg2591:7:10
# text = ‘But what are we to do now?’ said the coal.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
3	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
4	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
5	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	parataxis	_	_
8	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	coal	coal	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | we |  |  |  | now | do *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the coal |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent coal=Topic |

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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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