---
title: "Last night I looked down upon a town in China," said the Moon. " — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Last night I looked down upon a town in China," said the Moon. " Who acts: Moon. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Twenty-sixth Evening, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Twenty-sixth Evening, sentence 1

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"Last night I looked down upon a town in China," said the Moon. "

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**Who acts:** Moon · **What happens:** look down, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Twenty-sixth Evening. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Moon), 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:pg27200:117:1
# text = "Last night I looked down upon a town in China," said the Moon. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:unmarked	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	ccomp	_	_
6	down	down	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
7	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	town	town	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	China	China	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
14	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	Moon	Moon	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
18	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **look down** *in a quote* | past | the Moon *= moon* |  |  |  | night | upon a town in China; down *property* | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent upon town=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Moon |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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