---
title: The snow still lay upon the ground, and there was a coat of ice on t… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The snow still lay upon the ground, and there was a coat of ice on the water every night. Who acts: snow. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Snowdrop, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Snowdrop, sentence 11

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The snow still lay upon the ground, and there was a coat of ice on the water every night.

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**Who acts:** snow · **What happens:** lie, be · **To what, where:** ground, coat

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Snowdrop. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (snow), 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:pg27200:177:11
# text = The snow still lay upon the ground, and there was a coat of ice on the water every night.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	snow	snow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	still	still	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	lay	lie	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	11	expl	_	_
11	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	coat	coat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	ice	ice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	_
16	on	on	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	_
19	every	every	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	20	det	_	_
20	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lie** | past | the snow |  |  | the ground | still; night |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent upon ground=Location |
| 2 | **is a** | past |  | a coat |  |  |  | of ice on the water | 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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