---
title: Then said the stepmother, “I cannot part your hair with a comb, fetc… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Then said the stepmother, “I cannot part your hair with a comb, fetch me an axe.” Who acts: I. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Rose-tree, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, The Rose-tree, sentence 21

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Then said the stepmother, “I cannot part your hair with a comb, fetch me an axe.”

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** say, not part, fetch · **To what, where:** stepmother, hair, axe, me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Rose-tree. 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.

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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:pg7439:8:21
# text = Then said the stepmother, “I cannot part your hair with a comb, fetch me an axe.”
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	2	advmod	_	_
2	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	stepmother	stepmother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
6	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
8	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
10	part	part	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	appos	_	_
11	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	hair	hair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	comb	comb	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
17	fetch	fetch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	ccomp	_	_
18	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	17	obj	_	_
19	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	axe	axe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	17	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the stepmother |  |  | then |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **part** *in a quote* | can | I | your hair |  |  |  | with a comb | tree rules |
| 3 | **fetch** *in a quote* | infinitive |  | a axe | me |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1-1 «NP V NP.beneficiary NP»: agent=Agent i=Beneficiary axe=Theme |

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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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