---
title: Then the wicked sprite laughed till he almost choked, for all this t… — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Then the wicked sprite laughed till he almost choked, for all this tickled his fancy. Who acts: wicked sprite, heart, this. 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/pg1597/11/20/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Snow Queen, part 1, sentence 20

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Then the wicked sprite laughed till he almost choked, for all this tickled his fancy.

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**Who acts:** wicked sprite, heart, this · **What happens:** laugh, choke, tickle, fancy · **To what, where:** fancy

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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 (wicked sprite, heart, this), 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:pg1597:11:20
# text = Then the wicked sprite laughed till he almost choked, for all this tickled his fancy.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	wicked	wicked	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	sprite	sprite	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	laughed	laugh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	till	till	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	almost	almost	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	choked	choke	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
12	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	14	det:predet	_	_
13	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	14	nsubj	_	_
14	tickled	tickle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	_
15	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	fancy	fancy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **laugh** | past | the wicked sprite |  |  |  | then |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **choke** | past | heart |  |  |  |  | almost *property* | vn die-42.4-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **tickle** | past | this | heart's fancy |  |  |  |  | vn touch-20-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fancy=Experiencer |
| 4 | **fancy** |  | heart |  |  |  |  |  | nom fancy «cognition transitive»: poss=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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