---
title: Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make me bread!” — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make me bread!” Who acts: castle, I. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack the Giant-killer, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Jack the Giant-killer, sentence 105

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Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make me bread!”

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**Who acts:** castle, I · **What happens:** be, grind, make · **To what, where:** bones, bread, me

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack the Giant-killer. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (castle, I), 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:pg7439:23:105
# text = Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make me bread!”
1	Be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	cop	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	alive	alive	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
4	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
5	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	cop	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	dead	dead	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	'll	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	grind	grind	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	parataxis	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	bones	bone	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obj	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	advcl	_	_
16	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	obj	_	_
17	bread	bread	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | infinitive | castle |  |  |  |  | alive *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | infinitive | castle |  |  |  |  | dead *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **grind** | future | I | castle's bones |  |  |  |  | vn carve-21.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bone=Patient |
| 4 | **make** | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | bread | me |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP NP»: agent=Asset i=Beneficiary bread=Product |

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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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