---
title: I would have plucked them already if they had not been so big." — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: I would have plucked them already if they had not been so big." Who acts: I, birds. 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 56

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I would have plucked them already if they had not been so big."

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**Who acts:** I, birds · **What happens:** pluck, not be · **To what, where:** birds

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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 (I, birds), 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:pg27200:124:56
# text = I would have plucked them already if they had not been so big."
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	aux	_	_
4	plucked	pluck	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	_
6	already	already	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
7	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
9	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
10	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
11	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	13	cop	_	_
12	so	so	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pluck** | would · perfect | I | birds *= bird* |  |  |  |  | vn braid-41.2.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Patient |
| 2 | **not** **is** | past · perfect | birds *= bird* |  |  |  |  | big *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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