---
title: But there was the white cloud with the black spot hanging over them. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: But there was the white cloud with the black spot hanging over them. Who acts: black spot. 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 182

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But there was the white cloud with the black spot hanging over them.

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**Who acts:** black spot · **What happens:** be, hang · **To what, where:** white cloud

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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 (black spot), 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:pg27200:177:182
# text = But there was the white cloud with the black spot hanging over them.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	3	expl	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	cloud	cloud	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
7	with	with	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	spot	spot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
11	hanging	hang	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	10	acl	_	_
12	over	over	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past |  | the white cloud |  |  |  | with the black spot | tree rules |
| 2 | **hang** | gerund | the black spot *not said here* |  |  |  |  | over Clouds *= cloud* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent over they=Location |

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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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