---
title: Jack said, the silly fellow, that he could do anything. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Jack said, the silly fellow, that he could do anything. Who acts: Jack. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack and His Golden Snuff-box, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Jack and His Golden Snuff-box, sentence 19

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Jack said, the silly fellow, that he could do anything.

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**Who acts:** Jack · **What happens:** say, do · **To what, where:** anything · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack and His Golden Snuff-box. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Jack), 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:pg7439:20:19
# text = Jack said, the silly fellow, that he could do anything.
1	Jack	Jack	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	silly	silly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	fellow	fellow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
12	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	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* | past | Jack |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **do** | could | Jack | anything |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent anything=Eventuality |

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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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