---
title: They did not reach higher than my knee; they looked like human being… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They did not reach higher than my knee; they looked like human beings, but were better proportioned, and they called themselves elves. Who acts: people. 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 depend
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, What the First Little Mouse Saw and Heard on Her Travels, sentence 27

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They did not reach higher than my knee; they looked like human beings, but were better proportioned, and they called themselves elves.

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**Who acts:** people · **What happens:** not reach, look, be, call · **To what, where:** higher, people · **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 (people), 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:pg27200:179:27
# text = They did not reach higher than my knee; they looked like human beings, but were better proportioned, and they called themselves elves.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	reach	reach	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	higher	high	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	4	obj	_	_
6	than	than	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	knee	knee	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	_
10	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
12	like	like	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	human	human	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	beings	being	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
16	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
17	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
18	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	11	parataxis	_	_
19	proportioned	proportion	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	18	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	_
21	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
22	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	23	nsubj	_	_
23	called	call	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	conj	_	_
24	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	23	obj	_	_
25	elves	elf	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	23	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **reach** | past · do-support | people | higher |  |  |  |  | vn body\_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Agent high=Theme |
| 2 | **look** | past | people |  |  |  |  | like human beings | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 3 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | good *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **call** | past | people | people |  |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent themselves=Recipient |

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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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