---
title: By-and-by he began to mimic the speech and gait of persons in the st… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: By-and-by he began to mimic the speech and gait of persons in the street. Who acts: glass. 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 51

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By-and-by he began to mimic the speech and gait of persons in the street.

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**Who acts:** glass · **What happens:** begin, mimic · **To what, where:** speech

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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 (glass), 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:pg27200:171:51
# text = By-and-by he began to mimic the speech and gait of persons in the street.
1	By	by	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	by	by	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	mimic	mimic	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	xcomp	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	speech	speech	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	gait	gait	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	conj	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	persons	person	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nmod	_	_
16	in	in	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	street	street	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past | glass |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **mimic** | to-infinitive | glass *not said here* | the speech and gait of persons in the street |  |  |  |  | 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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