---
title: People used to stop and peep through the railings. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: People used to stop and peep through the railings. Who acts: People. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Old House, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Old House, sentence 123

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People used to stop and peep through the railings.

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**Who acts:** People · **What happens:** use, stop, peep

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Old House. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (People), 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:pg27200:131:123
# text = People used to stop and peep through the railings.
1	People	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
2	used	use	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	stop	stop	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	peep	peep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
7	through	through	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	railings	railing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **use** | past | People |  |  |  |  |  | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **stop** | to-infinitive | People *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |
| 3 | **peep** | infinitive | People *not said here* |  |  |  |  | through the railings | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent through railing=Theme |

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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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