---
title: They filled the bottle with seeds, though it scarcely knew what had… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They filled the bottle with seeds, though it scarcely knew what had been placed in it. Who acts: stairs, paper. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/13/93/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/) / [The Bottle Neck](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/13/) / 93

# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Bottle Neck, sentence 93

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They filled the bottle with seeds, though it scarcely knew what had been placed in it.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** stairs, paper · **What happens:** fill, know, place · **To what, where:** bottle, paper · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (stairs, paper), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg27200:13:93
# text = They filled the bottle with seeds, though it scarcely knew what had been placed in it.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	filled	fill	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	bottle	bottle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	with	with	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	seeds	seed	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	though	though	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	scarcely	scarcely	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	knew	know	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
12	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	15	nsubj:pass	_	_
13	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
14	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	15	aux:pass	_	_
15	placed	place	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	ccomp	_	_
16	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fill** | past | stairs *= stair* | the bottle |  |  |  | with seeds | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent bottle=Patient with seed=Instrument |
| 2 | **know** | past | paper |  |  |  |  | scarcely *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 3 | **place** | past · perfect · passive |  |  |  | paper |  |  | vn put-9.1-2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: subject=Theme in it=Destination |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 92](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/13/92/)
- next →: [sentence 94](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/13/94/)
- ↑ back to [The Bottle Neck](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/13/)