---
title: Whether that person was a man or a woman was not an easy matter to d… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Whether that person was a man or a woman was not an easy matter to determine. Who acts: person, woman. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Poultry Meg's Family, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Poultry Meg's Family, sentence 164

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Whether that person was a man or a woman was not an easy matter to determine.

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**Who acts:** person, woman · **What happens:** be, not be, determine · **To what, where:** man, easy matter

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Poultry Meg's Family. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (person, woman), 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:pg27200:149:164
# text = Whether that person was a man or a woman was not an easy matter to determine.
1	Whether	whether	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
2	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	det	_	_
3	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
7	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
11	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
12	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	easy	easy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	matter	matter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	determine	determine	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | that person | a man or a easy matter |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **is a** | past | a woman | a easy matter |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **determine** | to-infinitive | that person *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn conjecture-29.5 «NP V that S»: 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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