---
title: He's only a common sailor, and therefore the law must take its cours… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: He's only a common sailor, and therefore the law must take its course." Who acts: husband, law. 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 187

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He's only a common sailor, and therefore the law must take its course."

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**Who acts:** husband, law · **What happens:** be, take · **To what, where:** common sailor, course

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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 (husband, law), 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:pg27200:149:187
# text = He's only a common sailor, and therefore the law must take its course."
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
3	only	only	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	common	common	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	sailor	sailor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
9	therefore	therefore	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	law	law	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
12	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	parataxis	_	_
14	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	course	course	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	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** | present | husband | a common sailor |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **take** | must | the law | sailor's course |  |  |  | therefore *property* | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent course=Theme |

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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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