---
title: And why, I should like to know, are the police never to be wrong? — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: And why, I should like to know, are the police never to be wrong? Who acts: I, like police. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Shoes of Fortune, part 4, 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/pg1597/8/12/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Shoes of Fortune, part 4, sentence 12

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And why, I should like to know, are the police never to be wrong?

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**Who acts:** I, like police · **What happens:** like, know, be, not be · **To what, where:** like police

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Shoes of Fortune, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, like police), 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:pg1597:8:12
# text = And why, I should like to know, are the police never to be wrong?
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	like	like	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	amod	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
10	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	police	police	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	_
13	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	16	advmod	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
15	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	cop	_	_
16	wrong	wrong	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	16	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **like** | should | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **know** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **is a** | present |  | the like police |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **not** **is** | to-infinitive | the like police |  |  |  |  | wrong *property* | 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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