---
title: “I heard it on my happiest evening; but I did not then know how happ… — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “I heard it on my happiest evening; but I did not then know how happy I was.” Who acts: Rats. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Fir Tree, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/10/177/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Fir Tree, sentence 177

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“I heard it on my happiest evening; but I did not then know how happy I was.”

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**Who acts:** Rats · **What happens:** hear, not know, be · **To what, where:** tale · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Fir Tree. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Rats), 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:pg1597:10:177
# text = “I heard it on my happiest evening; but I did not then know how happy I was.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	on	on	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
7	happiest	happy	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	8	amod	_	_
8	evening	evening	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	15	punct	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
11	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
12	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
13	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	15	advmod	_	_
14	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	15	advmod	_	_
15	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	parataxis	_	_
16	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	17	advmod	_	_
17	happy	happy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	ccomp	_	_
18	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
19	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hear** *in a quote* | past | the Rats *= rat* | tale |  |  | evening |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer it=Stimulus |
| 2 | **not** **know** *in a quote* | past · do-support | the Rats *= rat* |  |  |  | then |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **is** *in a quote* | past | the Rats *= rat* |  |  |  |  | happy *property* | tree rules |

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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:** «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 1597 (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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