---
title: But the little Fir wanted so very much to be a grown-up tree. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But the little Fir wanted so very much to be a grown-up tree. Who acts: little Fir. 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 3

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But the little Fir wanted so very much to be a grown-up tree.

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**Who acts:** little Fir · **What happens:** want, grow up, be · **To what, where:** grown tree

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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 (little Fir), 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:pg1597:10:3
# text = But the little Fir wanted so very much to be a grown-up tree.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	Fir	Fir	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	wanted	want	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	so	so	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
7	very	very	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	much	much	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
10	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	cop	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
12	grown	grow	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	15	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	up	up	ADP	RP	_	12	compound:prt	_	_
15	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **want** | past | the little Fir |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot |
| 2 | **grow up** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **is a** | to-infinitive | the little Fir *not said here* | a grown tree |  |  |  |  | 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.

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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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