---
title: The shoes were placed in a closet at home, but Karen could not avoid… — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The shoes were placed in a closet at home, but Karen could not avoid looking at them. Who acts: Karen. 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 44

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The shoes were placed in a closet at home, but Karen could not avoid looking at them.

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**Who acts:** Karen · **What happens:** place, not avoid, look · **To what, where:** shoes, closet

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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: who acts (Karen), 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:pg1597:27:44
# text = The shoes were placed in a closet at home, but Karen could not avoid looking at them.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	shoes	shoe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj:pass	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux:pass	_	_
4	placed	place	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	closet	closet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
8	at	at	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	home	home	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
11	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
12	Karen	Karen	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
13	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
14	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	15	advmod	_	_
15	avoid	avoid	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	advcl	_	_
16	looking	look	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	15	xcomp	_	_
17	at	at	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **place** | past · passive |  | the shoes |  | a closet at home |  |  | vn put-9.1-2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: subject=Theme in closet=Destination |
| 2 | **not** **avoid** | could | Karen |  |  |  |  |  | vn avoid-52 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 3 | **look** | gerund | Karen *not said here* |  |  |  |  | at shoes *= shoe* | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at they=Theme |

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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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