---
title: “We have a wife for him,” said the gnats. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “We have a wife for him,” said the gnats. Who acts: We, gnats. 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 46

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“We have a wife for him,” said the gnats.

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**Who acts:** We, gnats · **What happens:** have, say · **To what, where:** wife · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (We, gnats), 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:pg1597:20:46
# text = “We have a wife for him,” said the gnats.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	ccomp	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	for	for	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	gnats	gnat	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** *in a quote* | present | We | a wife |  |  |  | for forest | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wife=Patient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the gnats |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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