---
title: They were not brother and sister, but they loved each other almost a… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They were not brother and sister, but they loved each other almost as much as if they had been. Who acts: children. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, A Little Boy and a Little Girl, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, A Little Boy and a Little Girl, sentence 3

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They were not brother and sister, but they loved each other almost as much as if they had been.

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**Who acts:** children · **What happens:** not be, love, be · **To what, where:** brother, each

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, A Little Boy and a Little Girl. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (children), 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:pg27200:171:3
# text = They were not brother and sister, but they loved each other almost as much as if they had been.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	brother	brother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	sister	sister	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	loved	love	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	acl:relcl	_	_
11	each	each	DET	DT	ExtPos=PRON|PronType=Rcp	10	obj	_	_
12	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	fixed	_	_
13	almost	almost	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
14	as	as	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	obj	_	_
16	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	20	mark	_	_
17	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	20	mark	_	_
18	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
19	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
20	been	be	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	15	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is a** | past | children *= child* | brother and sister |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **love** | past | children *= child* | each |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **be** | past · perfect | children *= child* |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «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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