---
title: "There's not much of him lying there," observed the cock. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "There's not much of him lying there," observed the cock. Who acts: much, cock. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Portuguese Duck, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Portuguese Duck, sentence 107

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"There's not much of him lying there," observed the cock.

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**Who acts:** much, cock · **What happens:** be, lie, observe · **To what, where:** cock

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Portuguese Duck. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (much, cock), 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:pg27200:145:107
# text = "There's not much of him lying there," observed the cock.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	3	expl	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	's	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	nsubj	_	_
6	of	of	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
7	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	lying	lie	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	advcl	_	_
9	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	_
12	observed	observe	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	cock	cock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** *in a quote* | present | much |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **lie** *in a quote* | gerund | cock |  |  | there |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **observe** | past | much *not said here* | the cock |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent cock=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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