---
title: The roses are good for nothing but to be looked at and to be smelt,… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The roses are good for nothing but to be looked at and to be smelt, or at most to be stuck in a hat. Who acts: roses. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Neighbouring Families, 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/pg27200/124/41/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Neighbouring Families, sentence 41

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The roses are good for nothing but to be looked at and to be smelt, or at most to be stuck in a hat.

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**Who acts:** roses · **What happens:** be, look · **To what, where:** smelt, most

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Neighbouring Families. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (roses), 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:pg27200:124:41
# text = The roses are good for nothing but to be looked at and to be smelt, or at most to be stuck in a hat.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	roses	rose	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	for	for	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	4	obl	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
9	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	aux:pass	_	_
10	looked	look	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	conj	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	10	obl	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
13	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
14	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	cop	_	_
15	smelt	smelt	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
17	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
18	at	at	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	most	most	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	22	obl	_	_
20	to	to	PART	TO	_	22	mark	_	_
21	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	22	cop	_	_
22	stuck	stuck	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
23	in	in	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
24	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	25	det	_	_
25	hat	hat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | the roses |  |  |  |  | for nothing; good *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **look** | to-infinitive · passive | the roses *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute» |
| 3 | **is a** | to-infinitive | the roses *not said here* | smelt |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **is** | to-infinitive | the roses *not said here* |  |  | most |  | in a hat; stuck *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:** «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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