---
title: I can't think who could have invented such things. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: I can't think who could have invented such things. Who acts: I. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Three Sillies, 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/pg7439/7/40/)

<!-- 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 Three Sillies](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/7/) / 40

# English Fairy Tales, The Three Sillies, sentence 40

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
I can't think who could have invented such things.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** not think, invent · **To what, where:** such things · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Three Sillies. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg7439:7:40
# text = I can't think who could have invented such things.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	think	think	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	8	nsubj:pass	_	_
6	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
7	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	aux	_	_
8	invented	invent	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	ccomp	_	_
9	such	such	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **think** *speech: other* | can | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **invent** | could · perfect · passive |  | such things |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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 39](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/7/39/)
- next →: [sentence 41](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/7/41/)
- ↑ back to [The Three Sillies](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/7/)