---
title: Did you ever hear your papa and mamma talk about spitting? — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Did you ever hear your papa and mamma talk about spitting? Who acts: you, mamma. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Porter's Son, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/146/28/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Porter's Son, part 1, sentence 28

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Did you ever hear your papa and mamma talk about spitting?

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**Who acts:** you, mamma · **What happens:** hear, talk, spit · **To what, where:** papa

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Porter's Son, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, mamma), 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:pg27200:146:28
# text = Did you ever hear your papa and mamma talk about spitting?
1	Did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
2	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	ever	ever	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	4	advmod	_	_
4	hear	hear	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	papa	papa	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	mamma	mamma	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
9	talk	talk	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
10	about	about	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
11	spitting	spit	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	9	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hear** | past · do-support | you | your papa |  |  | ever |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer papa=Stimulus |
| 2 | **talk** | present | mamma |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **spit** | gerund | mamma *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn breathe-40.1.2 «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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