---
title: They are my sisters," said the child. " — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They are my sisters," said the child. " Who acts: sighs, sisters. 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 clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Child in the Grave, sentence 68

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They are my sisters," said the child. "

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**Who acts:** sighs, sisters · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** sisters, child · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (sighs, sisters), 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:pg27200:17:68
# text = They are my sisters," said the child. "
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	sisters	sister	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | sighs *= sigh* | my sisters |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | my sisters | the child |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent child=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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