---
title: ‘What an unlucky wretch I am!’ cried he. — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What an unlucky wretch I am!’ cried he. Who acts: I, unlucky wretch. 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/pg2591/9/29/)

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Dog and the Sparrow, sentence 29

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‘What an unlucky wretch I am!’ cried he.

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**Who acts:** I, unlucky wretch · **What happens:** be, cry · **To what, where:** unlucky wretch, harm

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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 (I, unlucky wretch), 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:pg2591:9:29
# text = ‘What an unlucky wretch I am!’ cried he.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	5	det:predet	_	_
3	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	unlucky	unlucky	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	wretch	wretch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
6	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
7	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
10	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | I | what unlucky wretch |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | what unlucky wretch | harm |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=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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