---
title: They could tell us something worth hearing, if they only knew how to… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They could tell us something worth hearing, if they only knew how to talk. Who acts: fellows. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, First Visit, 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/pg27200/136/17/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, First Visit, sentence 17

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They could tell us something worth hearing, if they only knew how to talk.

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**Who acts:** fellows · **What happens:** tell, know, talk · **To what, where:** something, us · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, First Visit. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fellows), 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:pg27200:136:17
# text = They could tell us something worth hearing, if they only knew how to talk.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	iobj	_	_
5	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	3	obj	_	_
6	worth	worth	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	hearing	hearing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
10	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
11	only	only	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	knew	know	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
13	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	15	advmod	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	talk	talk	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | could | fellows *= fellow* | something | us |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent we=Recipient something=Topic |
| 2 | **know** *a condition, not said to happen* | past | fellows *= fellow* |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 3 | **talk** | to-infinitive | fellows *= fellow* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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