---
title: They sit backwards on their painting brushes or quill pens, for stee… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They sit backwards on their painting brushes or quill pens, for steel pens won't bear them--they're too stiff. Who acts: notabilities, steel pens. 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/pg27200/136/25/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, First Visit, sentence 25

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They sit backwards on their painting brushes or quill pens, for steel pens won't bear them--they're too stiff.

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**Who acts:** notabilities, steel pens · **What happens:** sit, not bear, be · **To what, where:** painting brushes, notabilities

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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 (notabilities, steel pens), 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:pg27200:136:25
# text = They sit backwards on their painting brushes or quill pens, for steel pens won't bear them--they're too stiff.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sit	sit	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	backwards	backwards	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
4	on	on	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
6	painting	painting	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	_
7	brushes	brush	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	_
8	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	quill	quill	NOUN	NN	_	10	compound	_	_
10	pens	pen	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
12	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
13	steel	steel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	_
14	pens	pen	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	nsubj	_	_
15	wo	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	17	advmod	_	_
17	bear	bear	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	parataxis	_	_
18	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	23	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	're	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	23	cop	_	_
22	too	too	ADV	RB	_	23	advmod	_	_
23	stiff	stiff	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | present | notabilities *= notability* |  |  | notabilities's painting brushes or quill pens |  | backwards *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on brush=Location |
| 2 | **not** **bear** | future | steel pens | notabilities *= notability* |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Patient |
| 3 | **is** | present | notabilities *= notability* |  |  |  |  | stiff *property* | tree rules |

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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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