---
title: It was an old, dilapidated, mouldering dovecot. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: It was an old, dilapidated, mouldering dovecot. Who acts: name. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Shoes of Fortune, part 3, 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/pg1597/7/78/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Shoes of Fortune, part 3, sentence 78

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It was an old, dilapidated, mouldering dovecot.

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**Who acts:** name · **What happens:** be, dilapidate, moulder · **To what, where:** dovecot

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Shoes of Fortune, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (name), 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:pg1597:7:78
# text = It was an old, dilapidated, mouldering dovecot.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	dilapidated	dilapidate	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	mouldering	moulder	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	_
9	dovecot	dovecot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | name |  |  |  |  | old *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **dilapidate** | participle | name *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **moulder** | gerund | name *not said here* | dovecot |  |  |  |  | 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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