---
title: I have to look after my grandmother, who is very helpless.’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: I have to look after my grandmother, who is very helpless.’ Who acts: I, grandmother. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Nettle Spinner, sentence 15

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I have to look after my grandmother, who is very helpless.’

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**Who acts:** I, grandmother · **What happens:** have, look, be

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, grandmother), 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:pg540:42:15
# text = I have to look after my grandmother, who is very helpless.’
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	look	look	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	after	after	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	grandmother	grandmother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	12	nsubj	_	_
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
11	very	very	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	helpless	helpless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	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 | **have** | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **look** | to-infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  |  | after my grandmother |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 3 | **is** | present | my grandmother |  |  |  |  | helpless *property* | tree rules |

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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:** «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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