---
title: They nudged each other, and said, "Quack! that was witty!" — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They nudged each other, and said, "Quack! that was witty!" Who acts: others, that. 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 29

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They nudged each other, and said, "Quack! that was witty!"

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**Who acts:** others, that · **What happens:** nudge, say, be · **To what, where:** each, Quack · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (others, that), 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:pg27200:145:29
# text = They nudged each other, and said, "Quack! that was witty!"
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	nudged	nudge	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	each	each	DET	DT	ExtPos=PRON|PronType=Rcp	2	obj	_	_
4	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	fixed	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	Quack	quack	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
12	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	14	nsubj	_	_
13	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
14	witty	witty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **nudge** | past | others *= other* | each |  |  |  |  | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent each=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: express* | past | others *= other* *not said here* | Quack |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** *in a quote* | past | that |  |  |  |  | witty *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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