---
title: “There were once upon a time three sisters, quite transparent, and v… — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “There were once upon a time three sisters, quite transparent, and very beautiful. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Snow Queen, part 2, 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/pg1597/12/102/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Snow Queen, part 2, sentence 102

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“There were once upon a time three sisters, quite transparent, and very beautiful.

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**What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Snow Queen, part 2. 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:pg1597:12:102
# text = “There were once upon a time three sisters, quite transparent, and very beautiful.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	3	expl	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
4	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	3	advmod	_	_
5	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
8	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	9	nummod	_	_
9	sisters	sister	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	transparent	transparent	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
15	very	very	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
16	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | past |  |  |  |  |  | transparent *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** *in a quote* |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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