---
title: There was always something about them that was not as it should be. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: There was always something about them that was not as it should be. Who acts: something. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Princess and the Pea, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Princess and the Pea, sentence 4

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There was always something about them that was not as it should be.

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**Who acts:** something · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Princess and the Pea. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (something), 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:pg27200:150:4
# text = There was always something about them that was not as it should be.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	2	advmod	_	_
4	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	2	nsubj	_	_
5	about	about	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nmod	_	_
7	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	13	nsubj	_	_
8	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
9	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
10	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | something |  |  | there |  | always *property* | vn exist-47.1 «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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