---
title: May I venture to ask your name?" — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: May I venture to ask your name?" Who acts: I, your. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Shirt-collar, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Shirt-collar, sentence 4

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May I venture to ask your name?"

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**Who acts:** I, your · **What happens:** venture, ask, name · **To what, where:** name

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Shirt-collar. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, your), 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:pg27200:168:4
# text = May I venture to ask your name?"
1	May	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	venture	venture	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	name	name	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **venture** | may | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | your name |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent name=Recipient |
| 3 | **name** |  | your |  |  |  |  |  | nom name «communication transitive»: poss=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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