---
title: "But about what I was going to tell you. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "But about what I was going to tell you. Who acts: Moon. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Thirty-second Evening, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Thirty-second Evening, sentence 5

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"But about what I was going to tell you.

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**Who acts:** Moon · **What happens:** go, tell · **To what, where:** you · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Thirty-second 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:pg27200:123:5
# text = "But about what I was going to tell you.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
3	about	about	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	0	root	_	_
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	going	go	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	acl:relcl	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	xcomp	_	_
10	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	9	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** *in a quote* | past · progressive | the Moon and the quite little ones *= moon* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | to-infinitive | the Moon and the quite little ones *= moon* *not said here* |  | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent you=Recipient |

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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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