---
title: "But Kay! tell me about little Kay!" said Gerda, "was he amongst the… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "But Kay! tell me about little Kay!" said Gerda, "was he amongst the crowd?" Who acts: Kay, Gerda. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Prince and Princess, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/173/39/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Prince and Princess, sentence 39

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"But Kay! tell me about little Kay!" said Gerda, "was he amongst the crowd?"

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**Who acts:** Kay, Gerda · **What happens:** tell, say, be · **To what, where:** footmen · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Prince and Princess. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Kay, Gerda), 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:pg27200:173:39
# text = "But Kay! tell me about little Kay!" said Gerda, "was he amongst the crowd?"
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
3	Kay	Kay	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
5	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	csubj	_	_
6	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	iobj	_	_
7	about	about	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	Kay	Kay	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	ccomp	_	_
13	Gerda	Gerda	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	20	cop	_	_
17	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
18	amongst	amongst	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	crowd	crowd	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	20	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	20	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | infinitive | Kay |  | footmen *= footman* |  |  | about little Kay | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent i=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | Gerda |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** *in a quote* | past | Kay |  |  |  |  | amongst the crowd | 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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