---
title: Perhaps it would be more profitable to have a sheep than a cow. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Perhaps it would be more profitable to have a sheep than a cow. Who acts: it. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, What the Old Man Does Is Always Right, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, What the Old Man Does Is Always Right, sentence 36

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Perhaps it would be more profitable to have a sheep than a cow.

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**Who acts:** it · **What happens:** be, have · **To what, where:** sheep

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, What the Old Man Does Is Always Right. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (it), 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:pg27200:132:36
# text = Perhaps it would be more profitable to have a sheep than a cow.
1	Perhaps	perhaps	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	cop	_	_
5	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	6	advmod	_	_
6	profitable	profitable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	csubj	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	sheep	sheep	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	than	than	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	cow	cow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | would | it |  |  |  |  | perhaps, profitable *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** | to-infinitive |  | a sheep |  |  |  | than a cow | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sheep=Patient |

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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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