---
title: If I were a cock, I should despise her." — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: If I were a cock, I should despise her." Who acts: I. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, There Is No Doubt About It, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, There Is No Doubt About It, sentence 17

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If I were a cock, I should despise her."

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** be, despise · **To what, where:** cock, hen

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, There Is No Doubt About It. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg27200:126:17
# text = If I were a cock, I should despise her."
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	cock	cock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
7	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	despise	despise	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
10	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *a condition, not said to happen* | past | I | a cock |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **despise** | should | I | hen |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer she=Stimulus |

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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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