---
title: “I wish I could--I wish I could--“; she was not able to speak the re… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “I wish I could--I wish I could--“; she was not able to speak the rest, being interrupted by her tears and sobbing. Who acts: rest, Cinderella. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/11/26/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Blue Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/) / [Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/11/) / 26

# The Blue Fairy Book, Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper, sentence 26

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“I wish I could--I wish I could--“; she was not able to speak the rest, being interrupted by her tears and sobbing.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** rest, Cinderella · **What happens:** wish, not be, speak, interrupt · **To what, where:** rest · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (rest, Cinderella), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg503:11:26
# text = “I wish I could--I wish I could--“; she was not able to speak the rest, being interrupted by her tears and sobbing.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	wish	wish	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	advcl	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	wish	wish	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
14	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
15	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
16	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	17	advmod	_	_
17	able	able	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	parataxis	_	_
18	to	to	PART	TO	_	19	mark	_	_
19	speak	speak	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	xcomp	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	rest	rest	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
23	being	be	AUX	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	24	aux:pass	_	_
24	interrupted	interrupt	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	21	acl:relcl	_	_
25	by	by	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
26	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	27	nmod:poss	_	_
27	tears	tear	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	24	obl	_	_
28	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	29	cc	_	_
29	sobbing	sobbing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	27	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
30	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wish** *in a quote* | present | the rest *= rest* |  |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V for NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot |
| 2 | **wish** *in a quote* | present | the rest *= rest* |  |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V that S»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 3 | **not** **is** | past | Cinderella |  |  |  |  | able *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **speak** *speech: other* | to-infinitive | the rest |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **interrupt** | gerund · passive |  | the rest *not said here* |  |  |  | by Cinderella's tears and sobbing | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 25](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/11/25/)
- next →: [sentence 27](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/11/27/)
- ↑ back to [Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/11/)