---
title: “If I had but something new to tell,” said the old man. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “If I had but something new to tell,” said the old man. Who acts: old 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/17/6/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Elderbush, sentence 6

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“If I had but something new to tell,” said the old man.

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**Who acts:** old man · **What happens:** have, tell, say · **To what, where:** something · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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), 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:pg1597:17:6
# text = “If I had but something new to tell,” said the old man.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	4	mark	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	_
5	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	4	obj	_	_
7	new	new	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** *a condition, not said to happen, in a quote* | past | the old man *= man* | something |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent something=Patient |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | to-infinitive | the old man *= man* *not said here* | something *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the old man |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=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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