---
title: These people must at all events be wrong, or they could not mean me. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: These people must at all events be wrong, or they could not mean me. Who acts: people. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Silver Shilling, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Silver Shilling, sentence 25

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These people must at all events be wrong, or they could not mean me.

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**Who acts:** people · **What happens:** be, not mean · **To what, where:** events, me

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Silver Shilling. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg27200:167:25
# text = These people must at all events be wrong, or they could not mean me.
1	These	this	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	2	det	_	_
2	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
3	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
4	at	at	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	6	det	_	_
6	events	event	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	_
7	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	cop	_	_
8	wrong	wrong	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
12	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
13	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
14	mean	mean	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	conj	_	_
15	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | must | this people |  |  | all events |  | wrong *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **mean** | could | people | me |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=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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