---
title: And this thought rolled and grew like a snowball, until it seemed to… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: And this thought rolled and grew like a snowball, until it seemed to crush him. Who acts: thought, it. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Psyche, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Psyche, sentence 214

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And this thought rolled and grew like a snowball, until it seemed to crush him.

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**Who acts:** thought, it · **What happens:** roll, grow, seem, crush · **To what, where:** evil

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Psyche. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (thought, it), 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:pg27200:151:214
# text = And this thought rolled and grew like a snowball, until it seemed to crush him.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	det	_	_
3	thought	thought	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	rolled	roll	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	grew	grow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
7	like	like	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	snowball	snowball	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	until	until	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	crush	crush	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
16	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **roll** | past | this thought |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **grow** | past | this thought *not said here* |  |  |  |  | like a snowball | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **seem** | past | it |  |  |  |  |  | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme clause=Attribute |
| 4 | **crush** | to-infinitive |  | evil |  |  |  |  | vn carve-21.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=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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