---
title: "They must have been excellent, sensible people," said the pastor's… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "They must have been excellent, sensible people," said the pastor's son. Who acts: mistress, excellent sensible people. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Everything in the Right Place, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Everything in the Right Place, sentence 84

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"They must have been excellent, sensible people," said the pastor's son.

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**Who acts:** mistress, excellent sensible people · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** excellent sensible people, son · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Everything in the Right Place. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mistress, excellent sensible 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:pg27200:155:84
# text = "They must have been excellent, sensible people," said the pastor's son.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
3	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
4	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	aux	_	_
5	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	9	cop	_	_
6	excellent	excellent	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
8	sensible	sensible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	pastor	pastor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	's	's	PART	POS	_	14	case	_	_
16	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | must · perfect | mistress | excellent sensible people |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | excellent sensible people | the pastor's son |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent son=Topic |

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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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