---
title: Behind the counter, as a rule, there were no young men. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Behind the counter, as a rule, there were no young men. Who acts: young men. 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 23

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Behind the counter, as a rule, there were no young men.

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**Who acts:** young men · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** counter

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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 (young men), 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:pg27200:128:23
# text = Behind the counter, as a rule, there were no young men.
1	Behind	behind	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	counter	counter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
5	as	as	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	rule	rule	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
9	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	10	expl	_	_
10	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	13	det	_	_
12	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | no young men |  |  | the counter and a rule; there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme behind counter=Location |

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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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