---
title: And the girl took the letter and said she would go. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: And the girl took the letter and said she would go. Who acts: girl. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Fish and the Ring, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/41/23/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [English Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/) / [The Fish and the Ring](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/41/) / 23

# English Fairy Tales, The Fish and the Ring, sentence 23

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
And the girl took the letter and said she would go.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** girl · **What happens:** take, say, go · **To what, where:** letter · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Fish and the Ring. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (girl), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg7439:41:23
# text = And the girl took the letter and said she would go.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	letter	letter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
9	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | the girl | the letter |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent letter=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the girl *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **go** | would | girl |  |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/41/22/)
- next →: [sentence 24](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/41/24/)
- ↑ back to [The Fish and the Ring](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/41/)