---
title: Gretchen says they _could_." — Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains · tree and pragmatics
description: Gretchen says they _could_." Who acts: Gretchen. A sentence of «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, Legends and Tales., part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains, Legends and Tales., part 3, sentence 116

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Gretchen says they \_could\_."

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**Who acts:** Gretchen · **What happens:** say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, Legends and Tales., part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Gretchen), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg74323:4:116
# text = Gretchen says they _could_."
1	Gretchen	Gretchen	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	2	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | Gretchen |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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:** «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, Project Gutenberg book 74323 (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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