---
title: I don't know what to do but tear you to pieces." — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: I don't know what to do but tear you to pieces." Who acts: I. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Shee an Gannon and the Gruagach Gaire, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Shee an Gannon and the Gruagach Gaire, sentence 23

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I don't know what to do but tear you to pieces."

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** not know, do, tear · **To what, where:** you · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Shee an Gannon and the Gruagach Gaire. 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:pg7885:19:23
# text = I don't know what to do but tear you to pieces."
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	ccomp	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	tear	tear	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
10	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	pieces	piece	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **know** | present · do-support | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **do** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |
| 3 | **tear** | infinitive | I *not said here* | you |  |  |  | to pieces *result* | vn break-45.1 «NP V NP PP.result»: agent=Agent you=Patient to piece=Result |

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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:** «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7885 (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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