---
title: As they went along, a cow began lowing. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: As they went along, a cow began lowing. Who acts: lords, cow. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Nightingale, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Nightingale, sentence 40

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As they went along, a cow began lowing.

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**Who acts:** lords, cow · **What happens:** go along, begin, low

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Nightingale. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lords, cow), 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:pg27200:125:40
# text = As they went along, a cow began lowing.
1	As	as	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	advcl	_	_
4	along	along	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	cow	cow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
8	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	lowing	low	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go along** | past | lords *= lord* |  |  |  |  | along *property* | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **begin** | past | a cow |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **low** | gerund | a cow *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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- ← previous: [sentence 39](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/125/39/)
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