---
title: If we had not God to trust in, we should have nothing." — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: If we had not God to trust in, we should have nothing." Who acts: we, God. 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 73

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If we had not God to trust in, we should have nothing."

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**Who acts:** we, God · **What happens:** have, trust · **To what, where:** God, nothing

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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 (we, God), 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:pg27200:158:73
# text = If we had not God to trust in, we should have nothing."
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	God	God	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	trust	trust	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
8	in	in	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
10	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
11	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
13	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** *a condition, not said to happen* | past | we | God |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **trust** | to-infinitive | God *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn conjecture-29.5-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **have** | should | we | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=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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