---
title: They were meant for the little girl. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: They were meant for the little girl. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Red Shoes, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Red Shoes, sentence 3

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They were meant for the little girl.

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**What happens:** mean · **To what, where:** shoes

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Red Shoes. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg1597:27:3
# text = They were meant for the little girl.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux:pass	_	_
3	meant	mean	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
4	for	for	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** | past · passive |  | shoes *= shoe* |  |  |  | for the little girl | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: subject=Theme for girl=Attribute |

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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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