---
title: “Black snails without a house--but they are so common, and so concei… — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Black snails without a house--but they are so common, and so conceited. Who acts: Black snails. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Happy Family, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Happy Family, sentence 35

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“Black snails without a house--but they are so common, and so conceited.

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**Who acts:** Black snails · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Happy Family. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Black snails), 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:pg1597:20:35
# text = “Black snails without a house--but they are so common, and so conceited.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	snails	snail	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	_
4	without	without	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
10	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
11	so	so	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	common	common	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
15	so	so	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
16	conceited	conceited	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | present | Black snails without a house |  |  |  |  | common *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** *in a quote* |  | Black snails without a house *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | 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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