---
title: "It may have been so," said the crow; "I did not look at it very clo… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "It may have been so," said the crow; "I did not look at it very closely. Who acts: knapsack, crow. 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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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Prince and Princess, sentence 46

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"It may have been so," said the crow; "I did not look at it very closely.

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**Who acts:** knapsack, crow · **What happens:** be, say, not look · **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 (knapsack, crow), 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:pg27200:173:46
# text = "It may have been so," said the crow; "I did not look at it very closely.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	aux	_	_
5	been	be	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	9	ccomp	_	_
6	so	so	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	crow	crow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	17	punct	_	_
13	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
15	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
16	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	17	advmod	_	_
17	look	look	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	conj	_	_
18	at	at	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obl	_	_
20	very	very	ADV	RB	_	21	advmod	_	_
21	closely	closely	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** *in a quote* | may · perfect | knapsack |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the crow |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **not** **look** *in a quote* | past · do-support | the crow *= crow* |  |  |  |  | at knapsack; closely *property* | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at it=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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