---
title: Why, one morning there came a quantity of people and set to work in… — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Why, one morning there came a quantity of people and set to work in the loft. 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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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Fir Tree, sentence 187

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Why, one morning there came a quantity of people and set to work in the loft.

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**What happens:** come, set, work · **To what, where:** quantity

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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: 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:pg1597:10:187
# text = Why, one morning there came a quantity of people and set to work in the loft.
1	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
3	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	4	nummod	_	_
4	morning	morning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
5	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
6	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	quantity	quantity	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nmod	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	set	set	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
13	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
14	work	work	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	xcomp	_	_
15	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	loft	loft	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past |  | a quantity of people |  |  | morning |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location quantity=Theme |
| 2 | **set** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **work** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | in the loft | vn employment-95.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent in loft=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:** «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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