---
title: For a long time they went on without speaking. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: For a long time they went on without speaking. Who acts: churches. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, A Story From the Sand-hills, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, A Story From the Sand-hills, part 1, sentence 71

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
For a long time they went on without speaking.

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**Who acts:** churches · **What happens:** go on, speak · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, A Story From the Sand-hills, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (churches), 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:pg27200:158:71
# text = For a long time they went on without speaking.
1	For	for	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
5	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	on	on	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
8	without	without	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
9	speaking	speak	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go on** | past | churches *= church* |  |  |  | time |  | vn function-105.2.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **speak** *speech: other* | gerund | churches *= church* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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