---
title: But this time I happened to see two children playing in this wildern… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: But this time I happened to see two children playing in this wilderness of sweepings. Who acts: time, two children. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Third Visit, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Third Visit, sentence 2

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But this time I happened to see two children playing in this wilderness of sweepings.

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**Who acts:** time, two children · **What happens:** happen, see, play · **To what, where:** two children, wilderness

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Third Visit. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (time, two children), 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:pg27200:138:2
# text = But this time I happened to see two children playing in this wilderness of sweepings.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	det	_	_
3	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	happened	happen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	9	nummod	_	_
9	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	_
10	playing	play	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	acl	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	13	det	_	_
13	wilderness	wilderness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	sweepings	sweeping	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **happen** | past | this time |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **see** | to-infinitive | this time *not said here* | two children |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer child=Stimulus |
| 3 | **play** | gerund | two children *not said here* |  |  | this wilderness of sweepings |  |  | vn performance-26.7-1 «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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