---
title: “Why, your bow is quite spoiled,” said the old poet. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Why, your bow is quite spoiled,” said the old poet. Who acts: old poet. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Naughty Boy, 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/pg1597/26/24/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Naughty Boy, sentence 24

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“Why, your bow is quite spoiled,” said the old poet.

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**Who acts:** old poet · **What happens:** spoil, say · **To what, where:** bow · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Naughty Boy. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old poet), 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:pg1597:26:24
# text = “Why, your bow is quite spoiled,” said the old poet.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
4	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	bow	bow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj:pass	_	_
6	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux:pass	_	_
7	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	spoiled	spoil	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	poet	poet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **spoil** *in a quote* | present · passive |  | your bow |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the old poet |  |  |  |  |  | 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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