---
title: The cold wind blew over the bowed backs of the willows, so that they… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The cold wind blew over the bowed backs of the willows, so that they creaked again. Who acts: cold wind, willows. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Butterfly, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Butterfly, sentence 47

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The cold wind blew over the bowed backs of the willows, so that they creaked again.

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**Who acts:** cold wind, willows · **What happens:** blow, bow, creak · **To what, where:** bowed backs

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Butterfly. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cold wind, willows), 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:pg27200:15:47
# text = The cold wind blew over the bowed backs of the willows, so that they creaked again.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	cold	cold	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	wind	wind	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	blew	blow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	over	over	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	bowed	bow	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	8	amod	_	_
8	backs	back	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	willows	willow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
13	so	so	SCONJ	IN	ExtPos=SCONJ	16	mark	_	_
14	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	13	fixed	_	_
15	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	creaked	creak	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
17	again	again	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **blow** | past | the cold wind |  |  | the bowed backs of the willows |  |  | vn split-23.2 «NP V apart»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **bow** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn acquiesce-95.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **creak** | past | willows *= willow* |  |  |  | again |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=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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