---
title: He had a sweet voice, and every melody seemed to flow naturally from… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: He had a sweet voice, and every melody seemed to flow naturally from his lips. Who acts: boy, melody. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, A Story From the Sand-hills, part 2, 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 2, sentence 26

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He had a sweet voice, and every melody seemed to flow naturally from his lips.

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**Who acts:** boy, melody · **What happens:** have, seem, flow · **To what, where:** sweet voice, lips

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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 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boy, melody), 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:pg27200:159:26
# text = He had a sweet voice, and every melody seemed to flow naturally from his lips.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	sweet	sweet	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	voice	voice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	every	every	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	9	det	_	_
9	melody	melody	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	flow	flow	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	xcomp	_	_
13	naturally	naturally	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
14	from	from	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	lips	lip	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | boy | a sweet voice |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent voice=Patient |
| 2 | **seem** | past | every melody |  |  |  |  |  | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme clause=Attribute |
| 3 | **flow** | to-infinitive | every melody *not said here* |  |  | boy's lips |  | naturally *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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