---
title: In the spring they pulled the house down, for, as people said, it wa… — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: In the spring they pulled the house down, for, as people said, it was a ruin. Who acts: portraits, people, house. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Old House, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Old House, sentence 103

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In the spring they pulled the house down, for, as people said, it was a ruin.

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**Who acts:** portraits, people, house · **What happens:** pull down, say, be · **To what, where:** house, ruin · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Old House. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (portraits, people, house), 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:pg1597:19:103
# text = In the spring they pulled the house down, for, as people said, it was a ruin.
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	spring	spring	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	pulled	pull	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	down	down	ADP	RP	_	5	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	for	for	ADP	IN	_	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
13	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nsubj	_	_
14	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
16	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
17	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	ruin	ruin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pull down** | past | portraits *= portrait* | the house |  |  | spring |  | vn push-12-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent house=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | people |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** | past | house | a ruin |  |  |  |  | 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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