---
title: Well, just as the day was beginning to break what should the frog sa… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Well, just as the day was beginning to break what should the frog say but: Who acts: day, frog. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Well of the World's End, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, The Well of the World's End, sentence 42

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Well, just as the day was beginning to break what should the frog say but:

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**Who acts:** day, frog · **What happens:** begin, break, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Well of the World's End. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (day, frog), 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:pg7439:47:42
# text = Well, just as the day was beginning to break what should the frog say but:
1	Well	well	INTJ	UH	_	8	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	just	just	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
4	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
7	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	beginning	begin	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	break	break	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	xcomp	_	_
11	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	15	obj	_	_
12	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	frog	frog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
15	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
16	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past · progressive | the day |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **break** | to-infinitive | the day *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | should | the frog |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=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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