---
title: I tickle his neck every evening with my sharp knife, which frightens… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: I tickle his neck every evening with my sharp knife, which frightens him very much." Who acts: I, sharp knife. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Little Robber-girl, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Little Robber-girl, sentence 33

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I tickle his neck every evening with my sharp knife, which frightens him very much."

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**Who acts:** I, sharp knife · **What happens:** tickle, frighten · **To what, where:** neck, chimney

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Little Robber-girl. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, sharp knife), 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:pg27200:174:33
# text = I tickle his neck every evening with my sharp knife, which frightens him very much."
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	tickle	tickle	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	neck	neck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	every	every	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	6	det	_	_
6	evening	evening	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl:unmarked	_	_
7	with	with	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
9	sharp	sharp	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	knife	knife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	13	nsubj	_	_
13	frightens	frighten	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	acl:relcl	_	_
14	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	very	very	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
16	much	much	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tickle** | present | I | chimney's neck |  |  | evening | with my sharp knife | vn touch-20-1 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent neck=Experiencer with knife=Instrument |
| 2 | **frighten** | present | my sharp knife | chimney |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus he=Experiencer |

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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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