---
title: “I started to go down cellar, and there was a man down there choppin… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “I started to go down cellar, and there was a man down there chopping wood, and he knocked me up with his axe.” Who acts: Jack, man. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, How Jack Went to Seek His Fortune, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, How Jack Went to Seek His Fortune, sentence 47

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“I started to go down cellar, and there was a man down there chopping wood, and he knocked me up with his axe.”

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**Who acts:** Jack, man · **What happens:** start, go down, be, chop, knock up · **To what, where:** cellar, wood, Jack

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, How Jack Went to Seek His Fortune. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Jack, man), 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:pg7439:10:47
# text = “I started to go down cellar, and there was a man down there chopping wood, and he knocked me up with his axe.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	started	start	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	down	down	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
7	cellar	cellar	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	11	expl	_	_
11	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
14	down	down	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	13	advmod	_	_
16	chopping	chop	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	13	acl	_	_
17	wood	wood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
20	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
21	knocked	knock	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
22	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	21	obj	_	_
23	up	up	ADP	RP	_	21	compound:prt	_	_
24	with	with	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
25	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	26	nmod:poss	_	_
26	axe	axe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
28	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **start** *in a quote* | past | Jack |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **go down** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | Jack *not said here* | cellar |  |  |  | down *property* | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1-1 «NP.patient V NP.extent PP.source PP.goal»: agent=Patient cellar=Extent |
| 3 | **be** *in a quote* | past | a man |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **chop** *in a quote* | gerund | a man *not said here* | wood |  |  |  |  | vn carve-21.2-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wood=Patient |
| 5 | **knock up** *in a quote* | past | man | Jack |  |  |  | with man's axe | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent i=Patient with axe=Instrument |

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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:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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