---
title: He could scarcely reach the water jug that he had placed by his bed,… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: He could scarcely reach the water jug that he had placed by his bed, and the last drop was gone. Who acts: weather, last drop. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Old Bachelor's Nightcap, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Old Bachelor's Nightcap, sentence 183

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He could scarcely reach the water jug that he had placed by his bed, and the last drop was gone.

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**Who acts:** weather, last drop · **What happens:** reach, place, be · **To what, where:** water jug

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Old Bachelor's Nightcap. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (weather, last drop), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg27200:7950`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg27200:128:183
# text = He could scarcely reach the water jug that he had placed by his bed, and the last drop was gone.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	scarcely	scarcely	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	reach	reach	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	_
7	jug	jug	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
8	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	11	obj	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	placed	place	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	7	acl:relcl	_	_
12	by	by	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	bed	bed	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
18	last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	drop	drop	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nsubj	_	_
20	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	cop	_	_
21	gone	gone	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reach** | could | weather | the water jug |  |  |  | scarcely *property* | vn body\_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Agent jug=Theme |
| 2 | **place** | past · perfect | weather | the water jug |  |  |  | by weather's bed | vn put-9.1-2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent that=Theme by bed=Destination |
| 3 | **is** | past | the last drop |  |  |  |  | gone *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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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