---
title: “What can be the meaning of this?” thought the old man, opening his… — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “What can be the meaning of this?” thought the old man, opening his eyes very wide. Who acts: old man. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Emperor's New Clothes, 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/pg1597/2/18/)

<!-- 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 Emperor's New Clothes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/2/) / 18

# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Emperor's New Clothes, sentence 18

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“What can be the meaning of this?” thought the old man, opening his eyes very wide.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** old man · **What happens:** be, open, mean · **To what, where:** eyes, this

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Emperor's New Clothes. 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.

<!-- .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:pg1597:2:18
# text = “What can be the meaning of this?” thought the old man, opening his eyes very wide.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	obj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	cop	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	meaning	meaning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
11	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
16	opening	open	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	11	advcl	_	_
17	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	obj	_	_
19	very	very	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	wide	wide	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | infinitive | the old man |  |  |  |  | think *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **open** | gerund | the old man *not said here* | meaning's eyes |  |  |  | wide *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location eye=Theme |
| 3 | **mean** *in a quote* |  |  | this |  |  |  |  | nom meaning «communication transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .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 17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/2/17/)
- next →: [sentence 19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/2/19/)
- ↑ back to [The Emperor's New Clothes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/2/)