---
title: “I cannot sell it for less,” rejoined the swineherd. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “I cannot sell it for less,” rejoined the swineherd. Who acts: lady. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Swineherd, 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/pg1597/3/51/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Swineherd, sentence 51

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“I cannot sell it for less,” rejoined the swineherd.

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**Who acts:** lady · **What happens:** not sell, rejoin · **To what, where:** price, swineherd · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Swineherd. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lady), 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:pg1597:3:51
# text = “I cannot sell it for less,” rejoined the swineherd.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	sell	sell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	_
7	for	for	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	less	less	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
11	rejoined	rejoin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	swineherd	swineherd	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **sell** *in a quote* | can | the lady *= lady* | price |  |  |  | for less | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP PP.asset»: agent=Agent it=Theme for less=Asset |
| 2 | **rejoin** | past |  | the swineherd |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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