---
title: “They say at home,” said the little boy, “that you are so very, very… — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “They say at home,” said the little boy, “that you are so very, very lonely!” Who acts: hands, little boy, you. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/19/41/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Old House, sentence 41

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“They say at home,” said the little boy, “that you are so very, very lonely!”

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**Who acts:** hands, little boy, you · **What happens:** say, be · **To what, where:** home · **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 (hands, little boy, you), 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:pg1597:19:41
# text = “They say at home,” said the little boy, “that you are so very, very lonely!”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	say	say	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
4	at	at	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	home	home	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
13	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	21	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
15	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
16	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
17	so	so	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	very	very	ADV	RB	_	21	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
20	very	very	ADV	RB	_	21	advmod	_	_
21	lonely	lonely	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	21	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	21	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | present | hands *= hand* |  |  | home |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: express* | past | the little boy |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **is** *in a quote* | present | you |  |  |  |  | very *property* | 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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