---
title: The higher they flew with the mirror, the more terribly it grinned:… — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The higher they flew with the mirror, the more terribly it grinned: they could hardly hold it fast. Who acts: sprite, joke. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Snow Queen, part 1, 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/pg1597/11/13/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Snow Queen, part 1, sentence 13

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The higher they flew with the mirror, the more terribly it grinned: they could hardly hold it fast.

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**Who acts:** sprite, joke · **What happens:** fly, grin, hold · **To what, where:** joke

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Snow Queen, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sprite, joke), 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:pg1597:11:13
# text = The higher they flew with the mirror, the more terribly it grinned: they could hardly hold it fast.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	higher	high	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	4	advmod	_	_
3	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	flew	fly	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	with	with	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	mirror	mirror	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	11	advmod	_	_
11	terribly	terribly	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	grinned	grin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	18	punct	_	_
15	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
16	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
17	hardly	hardly	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	hold	hold	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	ccomp	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	obj	_	_
20	fast	fast	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	18	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fly** | past | sprite |  |  |  |  | with the mirror | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **grin** | past | joke |  |  |  |  | terribly *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **hold** | could | sprite | joke |  |  |  | fast, hardly *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=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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