---
title: The robbers sat round the fire, singing and drinking, and the old wo… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The robbers sat round the fire, singing and drinking, and the old woman stumbled about. Who acts: robbers, old woman. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/174/43/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Little Robber-girl, sentence 43

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The robbers sat round the fire, singing and drinking, and the old woman stumbled about.

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**Who acts:** robbers, old woman · **What happens:** sit, sing, stumble

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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 (robbers, old woman), 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:pg27200:174:43
# text = The robbers sat round the fire, singing and drinking, and the old woman stumbled about.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	robbers	robber	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	round	round	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	fire	fire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	singing	sing	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	advcl	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	drinking	drinking	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
16	stumbled	stumble	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	conj	_	_
17	about	about	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | past | the robbers |  |  |  |  | round the fire | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **sing** *speech: express* | gerund | the robbers *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **stumble** | participle | the old woman |  |  |  |  | about *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «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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