---
title: Is that thing up yonder to teach me to run? — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Is that thing up yonder to teach me to run? Who acts: thing. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Snow Man, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Snow Man, sentence 21

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Is that thing up yonder to teach me to run?

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**Who acts:** thing · **What happens:** be, teach, run · **To what, where:** thing, me

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Snow Man. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (thing), 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:pg27200:169:21
# text = Is that thing up yonder to teach me to run?
1	Is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
2	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	det	_	_
3	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
4	up	up	ADP	RP	_	3	compound:prt	_	_
5	yonder	yonder	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	teach	teach	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	run	run	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | that thing |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **teach** *speech: other* | to-infinitive | that thing |  | me |  |  | yonder *property* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent i=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 3 | **run** | to-infinitive | that thing *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «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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