---
title: “But before I tell it, thou must first sing for me all the songs tho… — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “But before I tell it, thou must first sing for me all the songs thou hast sung for thy child! Who acts: woman, thou. 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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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Story of a Mother, sentence 16

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“But before I tell it, thou must first sing for me all the songs thou hast sung for thy child!

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**Who acts:** woman, thou · **What happens:** tell, sing · **To what, where:** way, songs · **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 (woman, thou), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg1597:1723`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg1597:21:16
# text = “But before I tell it, thou must first sing for me all the songs thou hast sung for thy child!
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	_
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
3	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	tell	tell	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
8	thou	thou	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	11	advmod	_	_
11	sing	sing	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
12	for	for	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	obl	_	_
14	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	16	det:predet	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	songs	song	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obj	_	_
17	thou	thou	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
18	hast	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Style=Arch|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	aux	_	_
19	sung	sing	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	16	acl:relcl	_	_
20	for	for	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	thy	thy	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	22	nmod:poss	_	_
22	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obl	_	_
23	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	11	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* | present | the woman in the black clothes *= woman* |  | way |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent it=Recipient |
| 2 | **sing** *speech: express* *in a quote* | must | thou | all songs |  |  |  | for the woman in the black clothes *= woman*; first *property* | vn performance-26.7-1 «NP V NP PP.beneficiary»: agent=Agent song=Theme for i=Beneficiary |
| 3 | **sing** *speech: express* *in a quote* | present · perfect | thou | all songs *not said here* |  |  |  | for thy child | vn performance-26.7-1 «NP V NP PP.beneficiary»: agent=Agent song=Theme for child=Beneficiary |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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