---
title: The older persons followed quietly; the little ones stood quite still. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The older persons followed quietly; the little ones stood quite still. Who acts: older persons, little ones. 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 97

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The older persons followed quietly; the little ones stood quite still.

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**Who acts:** older persons, little ones · **What happens:** follow, stand

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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 (older persons, little ones), 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:pg1597:10:97
# text = The older persons followed quietly; the little ones stood quite still.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	older	old	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	3	amod	_	_
3	persons	person	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	followed	follow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	quietly	quietly	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	ones	one	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
10	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
11	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	still	still	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **follow** | past | the older persons |  |  |  |  | quietly *property* | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **stand** | past | the little ones |  |  |  | still |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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