---
title: “I never did see anything so slender and so fine, so soft and so neat. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “I never did see anything so slender and so fine, so soft and so neat. Who acts: collar. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The False Collar, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The False Collar, sentence 4

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“I never did see anything so slender and so fine, so soft and so neat.

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**Who acts:** collar · **What happens:** not see · **To what, where:** anything

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The False Collar. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (collar), 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:pg1597:22:4
# text = “I never did see anything so slender and so fine, so soft and so neat.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
4	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	5	obj	_	_
7	so	so	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	slender	slender	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	so	so	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	fine	fine	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	so	so	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
14	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	conj	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
16	so	so	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
17	neat	neat	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **see** *in a quote* | past · do-support | the collar *= collar* | anything |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer anything=Stimulus |

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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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