---
title: But I shall return when he least expects me. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: But I shall return when he least expects me. Who acts: I. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Garden of Paradise, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Garden of Paradise, sentence 260

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But I shall return when he least expects me.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** return, expect · **To what, where:** me

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Garden of Paradise. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg27200:140:260
# text = But I shall return when he least expects me.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	return	return	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	8	mark	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	least	least	ADV	RBS	Degree=Sup	8	advmod	_	_
8	expects	expect	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
9	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **return** | shall | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **expect** | present | I *not said here* | me |  |  |  | least *property* | vn conjecture-29.5-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=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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