---
title: Fowls can always pick up a few grains that lie about, and almost kee… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Fowls can always pick up a few grains that lie about, and almost keep themselves. Who acts: Fowls, few grains. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/132/54/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, What the Old Man Does Is Always Right, sentence 54

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Fowls can always pick up a few grains that lie about, and almost keep themselves.

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**Who acts:** Fowls, few grains · **What happens:** pick up, lie, keep · **To what, where:** few grains, grains

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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 (Fowls, few grains), 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:pg27200:132:54
# text = Fowls can always pick up a few grains that lie about, and almost keep themselves.
1	Fowls	fowl	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
2	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	4	advmod	_	_
4	pick	pick	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	up	up	ADP	RP	_	4	compound:prt	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	grains	grain	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
9	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
10	lie	lie	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	_
11	about	about	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	almost	almost	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
16	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pick up** | can | Fowls | a few grains |  |  |  | always *property* | vn discover-84-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent grain=Topic |
| 2 | **lie** | present | a few grains |  |  |  |  | about *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **keep** | infinitive | Fowls *not said here* | grains *= grain* |  |  |  | almost *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent themselves=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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