---
title: Thou must sell thyself, thy wife, and thy children. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Thou must sell thyself, thy wife, and thy children. Who acts: Thou. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Fourteenth Evening, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Fourteenth Evening, sentence 12

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Thou must sell thyself, thy wife, and thy children.

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**Who acts:** Thou · **What happens:** sell · **To what, where:** thyself

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Fourteenth Evening. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Thou), 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:pg27200:105:12
# text = Thou must sell thyself, thy wife, and thy children.
1	Thou	thou	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=2|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	3	nsubj	_	_
2	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	sell	sell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	thyself	thyself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=2|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes|Style=Arch	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	thy	thy	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	thy	thy	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sell** | must | Thou | thyself |  |  |  | thy wife and thy children *obl* | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thyself=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:** «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (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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