---
title: The publican opened his eyes, but he said nothing, not he. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The publican opened his eyes, but he said nothing, not he. Who acts: publican. 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 27

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The publican opened his eyes, but he said nothing, not he.

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**Who acts:** publican · **What happens:** open, say · **To what, where:** eyes, nothing · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (publican), 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:pg7439:45:27
# text = The publican opened his eyes, but he said nothing, not he.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	publican	publican	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	opened	open	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
10	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **open** | past | the publican | publican's eyes |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location eye=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | publican | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent nothing=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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