---
title: Then the mother screamed with terror, “Which of them was my child? — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Then the mother screamed with terror, “Which of them was my child? Who acts: 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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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Story of a Mother, sentence 82

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Then the mother screamed with terror, “Which of them was my child?

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**Who acts:** mother · **What happens:** scream, be · **To what, where:** child · **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 (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:pg1597:21:82
# text = Then the mother screamed with terror, “Which of them was my child?
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	screamed	scream	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	with	with	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	terror	terror	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
8	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	Which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	14	nsubj	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obl	_	_
12	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
13	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **scream** *speech: express* | past | the mother |  |  |  | then | with terror | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP.location V PP.theme»: agent=Location with terror=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | past |  | my child |  |  |  |  | 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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