---
title: I have heard many respectable people say so, and I can quite underst… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: I have heard many respectable people say so, and I can quite understand it. Who acts: I, many respectable people. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Races, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Races, sentence 5

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I have heard many respectable people say so, and I can quite understand it.

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**Who acts:** I, many respectable people · **What happens:** hear, say, understand · **To what, where:** insult · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Races. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, many respectable people), 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:pg27200:153:5
# text = I have heard many respectable people say so, and I can quite understand it.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	heard	hear	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
5	respectable	respectable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	say	say	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
8	so	so	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
11	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
12	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
13	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
14	understand	understand	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	parataxis	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hear** | present · perfect | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V PP.stimulus»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | many respectable people |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **understand** | can | I | insult |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer it=Stimulus |

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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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