---
title: They declared that the problem would never be solved, that the thing… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They declared that the problem would never be solved, that the thing was an impossibility. Who acts: forests, thing. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, What the First Little Mouse Saw and Heard on Her Travels, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of ever
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, What the First Little Mouse Saw and Heard on Her Travels, sentence 16

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They declared that the problem would never be solved, that the thing was an impossibility.

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**Who acts:** forests, thing · **What happens:** declare, not solve, be · **To what, where:** problem, impossibility · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, What the First Little Mouse Saw and Heard on Her Travels. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (forests, thing), 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:pg27200:179:16
# text = They declared that the problem would never be solved, that the thing was an impossibility.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	declared	declare	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	problem	problem	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj:pass	_	_
6	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
7	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	9	advmod	_	_
8	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	aux:pass	_	_
9	solved	solve	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
11	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
14	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
15	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	impossibility	impossibility	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **declare** *speech: other* | past | forests *= forest* |  |  |  |  |  | vn declare-29.4-1-1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **solve** | would · passive |  | the problem |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: subject=Topic |
| 3 | **is a** | past | the thing | a impossibility |  |  |  |  | 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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