---
title: ‘Very well,’ answered the sparrow, ‘do so, and in the meantime I wil… — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Very well,’ answered the sparrow, ‘do so, and in the meantime I will perch upon that bush.’ Who acts: sparrow, I. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Dog and the Sparrow, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/9/17/)

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Dog and the Sparrow, sentence 17

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‘Very well,’ answered the sparrow, ‘do so, and in the meantime I will perch upon that bush.’

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**Who acts:** sparrow, I · **What happens:** answer, do, perch · **To what, where:** sparrow, meantime

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Dog and the Sparrow. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sparrow, I), 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:pg2591:9:17
# text = ‘Very well,’ answered the sparrow, ‘do so, and in the meantime I will perch upon that bush.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Very	very	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
6	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	sparrow	sparrow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	acl:relcl	_	_
12	so	so	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
15	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	meantime	meantime	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obl	_	_
18	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
19	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
20	perch	perch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
21	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
22	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	23	det	_	_
23	bush	bush	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	’	'	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 |  | the sparrow |  |  |  | well *property* | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent sparrow=Eventuality |
| 2 | **do** | infinitive | the sparrow *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **perch** | future | I |  |  | the meantime |  | upon that bush | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in meantime=Location |

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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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