---
title: I have acted on Molière's principle, and have taken what was good wh… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: I have acted on Molière's principle, and have taken what was good wherever I could find it. Who acts: I. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, _to My Dear Little May_, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, \_to My Dear Little May\_, sentence 24

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I have acted on Molière's principle, and have taken what was good wherever I could find it.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** act, take, be, find · **To what, where:** principle

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, \_to My Dear Little May\_. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg7439:3:24
# text = I have acted on Molière's principle, and have taken what was good wherever I could find it.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	acted	act	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	on	on	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	Molière	Molière	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	's	's	PART	POS	_	5	case	_	_
7	principle	principle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	taken	take	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	3	parataxis	_	_
12	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	14	nsubj	_	_
13	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
14	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	conj	_	_
15	wherever	wherever	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	18	advmod	_	_
16	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
17	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
18	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	csubj	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **act** | present · perfect | I |  |  | Molière's principle |  |  | vn act-114-1-1 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent on principle=Eventuality |
| 2 | **take** | present · perfect |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | good *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **find** | could | I | principle |  |  |  | wherever *property* | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Topic |

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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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