---
title: “Oh, only tell me which way he went!” said the mother. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Oh, only tell me which way he went!” said the mother. Who acts: Death, mother. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Story of a Mother, 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/pg1597/21/13/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Story of a Mother, sentence 13

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“Oh, only tell me which way he went!” said the mother.

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**Who acts:** Death, mother · **What happens:** tell, go, say · **To what, where:** way, mother · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Story of a Mother. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Death, mother), 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:pg1597:21:13
# text = “Oh, only tell me which way he went!” said the mother.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	5	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	only	only	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	ccomp	_	_
6	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	iobj	_	_
7	which	which	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	8	det	_	_
8	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | infinitive |  | which way | the mother *= mother* |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient way=Topic |
| 2 | **go** *in a quote* | past | Death | which way *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn meander-47.7 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location way=Theme |
| 3 | **say** *speech: express* | past | the mother |  |  |  |  |  | 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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