---
title: "Writing-stick!" retorted the inkstand. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Writing-stick!" retorted the inkstand. Who acts: Writing stick. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Pen and the Inkstand, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Pen and the Inkstand, sentence 44

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"Writing-stick!" retorted the inkstand.

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**Who acts:** Writing stick · **What happens:** retort · **To what, where:** inkstand

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Pen and the Inkstand. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Writing stick), 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:pg27200:142:44
# text = "Writing-stick!" retorted the inkstand.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Writing	writing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	stick	stick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	retorted	retort	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	inkstand	inkstand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **retort** *speech: other* | past | Writing stick | the inkstand |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent inkstand=Topic |

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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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