---
title: “But you can't, if they ain't come,” said the girl. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “But you can't, if they ain't come,” said the girl. Who acts: crusts, girl. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Tom Tit Tot, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Tom Tit Tot, sentence 14

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“But you can't, if they ain't come,” said the girl.

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**Who acts:** crusts, girl · **What happens:** not come, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Tom Tit Tot. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (crusts, girl), 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:pg7439:5:14
# text = “But you can't, if they ain't come,” said the girl.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	ai	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
14	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **come** *a condition, not said to happen, in a quote* | present | crusts *= crust* |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the girl |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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