---
title: "Nothing at all," answered their mother; "that's only something exte… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Nothing at all," answered their mother; "that's only something external. Who acts: Nothing, that. 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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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Neighbouring Families, sentence 52

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"Nothing at all," answered their mother; "that's only something external.

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**Who acts:** Nothing, that · **What happens:** answer, be · **To what, where:** mother, something · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Nothing, that), 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:pg27200:124:52
# text = "Nothing at all," answered their mother; "that's only something external.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	7	nsubj	_	_
3	at	at	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	2	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	_
7	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	15	punct	_	_
11	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	15	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
14	only	only	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	7	obl	_	_
16	external	external	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | Nothing |  | roses's mother |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent mother=Eventuality |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | that | something |  |  |  |  | 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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