---
title: Ask them only and you will hear what they'll tell you. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Ask them only and you will hear what they'll tell you. Who acts: you, father. 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/pg1597/26/42/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Naughty Boy, sentence 42

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Ask them only and you will hear what they'll tell you.

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**Who acts:** you, father · **What happens:** ask, hear, tell · **To what, where:** father, you · **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 (you, father), 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:pg1597:26:42
# text = Ask them only and you will hear what they'll tell you.
1	Ask	ask	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	iobj	_	_
3	only	only	ADV	RB	_	1	advmod	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	hear	hear	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	conj	_	_
8	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	11	obj	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	'll	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	conj	_	_
12	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	11	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | father |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent they=Recipient |
| 2 | **hear** | future | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V PP.stimulus»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* | future | father |  | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent you=Recipient what=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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