---
title: The old people were thoroughly honest, they had never cheated the la… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The old people were thoroughly honest, they had never cheated the lamp of a single drop of the oil provided for it. Who acts: old people, people, single drop. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Old Street Lamp, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/133/13/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Old Street Lamp, sentence 13

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The old people were thoroughly honest, they had never cheated the lamp of a single drop of the oil provided for it.

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**Who acts:** old people, people, single drop · **What happens:** be, not cheat, provide · **To what, where:** lamp

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Old Street Lamp. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old people, people, single drop), 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:pg27200:133:13
# text = The old people were thoroughly honest, they had never cheated the lamp of a single drop of the oil provided for it.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
4	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
5	thoroughly	thoroughly	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	honest	honest	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	cheated	cheat	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	6	conj	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	lamp	lamp	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
16	single	single	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	drop	drop	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	_
18	of	of	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	oil	oil	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obl	_	_
21	provided	provide	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	acl:relcl	_	_
22	for	for	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
23	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the old people |  |  |  |  | honest, thoroughly *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **cheat** | past · perfect | people | the lamp of a single drop |  |  |  |  | vn cheat-10.6.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent lamp=Source |
| 3 | **provide** | past | a single drop *not said here* |  |  |  |  | of the oil; for lamp | vn fulfilling-13.4.1-2 «NP V PP.recipient»: agent=Agent for it=Recipient |

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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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