---
title: The birch, waving in the wind, looked full of life, like trees in su… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The birch, waving in the wind, looked full of life, like trees in summer; and its appearance was wondrously beautiful. Who acts: birch, appearance. 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 34

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The birch, waving in the wind, looked full of life, like trees in summer; and its appearance was wondrously beautiful.

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**Who acts:** birch, appearance · **What happens:** wave, look, be

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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 (birch, appearance), 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:pg27200:169:34
# text = The birch, waving in the wind, looked full of life, like trees in summer; and its appearance was wondrously beautiful.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	birch	birch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	waving	wave	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	2	acl	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	wind	wind	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
9	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	full	full	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	xcomp	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	like	like	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	trees	tree	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl	_	_
16	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	summer	summer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	24	cc	_	_
20	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	21	nmod:poss	_	_
21	appearance	appearance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	nsubj	_	_
22	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	24	cop	_	_
23	wondrously	wondrously	ADV	RB	_	24	advmod	_	_
24	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wave** | gerund | the birch *not said here* |  |  |  |  | in the wind | vn wink-40.3.1 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent in wind=Theme |
| 2 | **look** | past | the birch |  |  |  |  | like trees in summer; full *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |
| 3 | **is** | past | birch's appearance |  |  |  |  | beautiful, wondrously *property* | tree rules |

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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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