---
title: She sank deeper than the spade of the sexton could penetrate, till t… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: She sank deeper than the spade of the sexton could penetrate, till the churchyard became a roof above her. Who acts: spectre, spade, churchyard. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Child in the Grave, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clau
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/17/44/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Child in the Grave, sentence 44

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She sank deeper than the spade of the sexton could penetrate, till the churchyard became a roof above her.

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**Who acts:** spectre, spade, churchyard · **What happens:** sink, penetrate, become · **To what, where:** roof

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Child in the Grave. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (spectre, spade, churchyard), 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:pg27200:17:44
# text = She sank deeper than the spade of the sexton could penetrate, till the churchyard became a roof above her.
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sank	sink	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	deeper	deep	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	2	xcomp	_	_
4	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	spade	spade	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	sexton	sexton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
10	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	penetrate	penetrate	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
13	till	till	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	churchyard	churchyard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
16	became	become	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	roof	roof	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	xcomp	_	_
19	above	above	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sink** | past | spectre |  |  |  |  | deep *property* | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **penetrate** | could | the spade of the sexton |  |  |  |  |  | vn poke-19 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **become** | past | the churchyard | a roof |  |  |  | above spectre | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient |

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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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