---
title: “Alas!” quoth the prince, “what shall we do there? — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Alas!” quoth the prince, “what shall we do there? Who acts: we. 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 44

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“Alas!” quoth the prince, “what shall we do there?

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**Who acts:** we · **What happens:** quoth, do · **To what, where:** prince

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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 (we), 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:pg7439:23:44
# text = “Alas!” quoth the prince, “what shall we do there?
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Alas	alas	INTJ	UH	_	5	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	quoth	quoth	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	prince	prince	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	13	obj	_	_
11	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
14	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	13	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **quoth** | present |  | the prince |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **do** *in a quote* | shall | we |  |  | there |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=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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