---
title: And the old man opened his Prayer-Book. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: And the old man opened his Prayer-Book. Who acts: old man, man. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Elderbush, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Elderbush, sentence 141

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And the old man opened his Prayer-Book.

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**Who acts:** old man, man · **What happens:** open, pray · **To what, where:** Prayer

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Elderbush. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old man, man), 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:pg1597:17:141
# text = And the old man opened his Prayer-Book.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	opened	open	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	Prayer	prayer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	Book	Book	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **open** | past | the old man | man's Prayer |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location prayer=Theme |
| 2 | **pray** |  | man |  |  |  |  |  | nom prayer «act intransitive»: 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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