---
title: “I can do better than that.--Come, my table, be covered!” — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “I can do better than that.--Come, my table, be covered!” Who acts: Ham. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Ass, the Table, and the Stick, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, The Ass, the Table, and the Stick, sentence 25

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“I can do better than that.--Come, my table, be covered!”

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**Who acts:** Ham · **What happens:** do, come, cover · **To what, where:** table

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Ass, the Table, and the Stick. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Ham), 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:pg7439:45:25
# text = “I can do better than that.--Come, my table, be covered!”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	better	well	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	4	advmod	_	_
6	than	than	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	Come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	table	table	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
15	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	aux:pass	_	_
16	covered	cover	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** *in a quote* | can | Ham for me and eggs *= ham* | my table |  |  |  | well *property* | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **come** *in a quote* | infinitive | Ham for me and eggs *= ham* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **cover** *in a quote* | infinitive · passive | Ham for me and eggs *= ham* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn fill-9.8-1 «NP V NP» |

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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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