---
title: And they had three clever boys--but not all at once. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: And they had three clever boys--but not all at once. Who acts: tragedy. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Porter's Son, part 3, 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/pg27200/148/122/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Porter's Son, part 3, sentence 122

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And they had three clever boys--but not all at once.

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**Who acts:** tragedy · **What happens:** have · **To what, where:** three clever boys

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Porter's Son, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tragedy), 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:pg27200:148:122
# text = And they had three clever boys--but not all at once.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	6	nummod	_	_
5	clever	clever	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
9	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
10	all	all	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | tragedy | three clever boys |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent boy=Patient |

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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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