---
title: There was a great squeezing of hands, and talking and questioning. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: There was a great squeezing of hands, and talking and questioning. Who acts: great squeezing. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, A Story From the Sand-hills, part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/161/87/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/) / [A Story From the Sand-hills, part 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/161/) / 87

# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, A Story From the Sand-hills, part 4, sentence 87

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
There was a great squeezing of hands, and talking and questioning.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** great squeezing · **What happens:** be, talk, question, squeeze · **To what, where:** hands

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, A Story From the Sand-hills, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (great squeezing), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg27200:161:87
# text = There was a great squeezing of hands, and talking and questioning.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	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	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	squeezing	squeezing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	hands	hand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	talking	talk	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	advcl	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	questioning	question	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	10	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a great squeezing of hands |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **talk** | gerund | a great squeezing of hands *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **question** *speech: other* | gerund | a great squeezing of hands *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn interrogate-37.1.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **squeeze** |  |  | hands |  |  |  |  | nom squeezing «act transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 86](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/161/86/)
- next →: [sentence 88](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/161/88/)
- ↑ back to [A Story From the Sand-hills, part 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/161/)