---
title: They were in the midst of the court-yard of a robber's castle. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: They were in the midst of the court-yard of a robber's castle. Who acts: hands. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Snow Queen, part 4, 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/pg1597/14/20/)

<!-- 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 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/14/) / 20

# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Snow Queen, part 4, sentence 20

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They were in the midst of the court-yard of a robber's castle.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** hands · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** midst

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Snow Queen, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (hands), 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:pg1597:14:20
# text = They were in the midst of the court-yard of a robber's castle.
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	in	in	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	midst	midst	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
8	court	court	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	yard	yard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	robber	robber	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	's	's	PART	POS	_	13	case	_	_
15	castle	castle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | hands *= hand* |  |  | the midst |  | of the court yard of a robber's castle | 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 19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/14/19/)
- next →: [sentence 21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/14/21/)
- ↑ back to [The Snow Queen, part 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/14/)