---
title: They were not elfin maidens, but mortal children. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: They were not elfin maidens, but mortal children. Who acts: sisters. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/12/105/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Andersen's Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/) / [The Snow Queen, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/12/) / 105

# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Snow Queen, part 2, sentence 105

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They were not elfin maidens, but mortal children.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** sisters · **What happens:** not be · **To what, where:** elfin maidens

<!-- .vabout -->
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: who acts (sisters), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg1597:12:105
# text = They were not elfin maidens, but mortal children.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
4	elfin	elfin	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	maidens	maiden	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	mortal	mortal	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is a** | past | sisters *= sister* | elfin maidens but mortal children |  |  |  |  | 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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 104](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/12/104/)
- next →: [sentence 106](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/12/106/)
- ↑ back to [The Snow Queen, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/12/)