---
title: At home in their wooden cottage these boys had an elder brother, a s… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: At home in their wooden cottage these boys had an elder brother, a sailor, who was about to start on a long voyage. Who acts: boys, sailor. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Bottle Neck, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Bottle Neck, sentence 56

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At home in their wooden cottage these boys had an elder brother, a sailor, who was about to start on a long voyage.

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**Who acts:** boys, sailor · **What happens:** have, be, start · **To what, where:** elder brother, home, long voyage

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Bottle Neck. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boys, sailor), 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:pg27200:13:56
# text = At home in their wooden cottage these boys had an elder brother, a sailor, who was about to start on a long voyage.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	home	home	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
3	in	in	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
4	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
5	wooden	wooden	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	cottage	cottage	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
7	these	this	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	8	det	_	_
8	boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
9	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	elder	elder	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	brother	brother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	sailor	sailor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
17	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	19	nsubj	_	_
18	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
19	about	about	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	conj	_	_
20	to	to	PART	TO	_	21	mark	_	_
21	start	start	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	19	xcomp	_	_
22	on	on	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
23	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	25	det	_	_
24	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	25	amod	_	_
25	voyage	voyage	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | this boys | a elder brother |  | home in boys's wooden cottage |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent brother=Patient |
| 2 | **is** | past | a sailor |  |  |  |  | about *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **start** | to-infinitive | a sailor *not said here* |  |  | a long voyage |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |

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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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