---
title: It had a tall trunk with a wide-spreading top, and was very old. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: It had a tall trunk with a wide-spreading top, and was very old. Who acts: oak. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, What the Second Mouse Had to Tell, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, What the Second Mouse Had to Tell, sentence 39

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It had a tall trunk with a wide-spreading top, and was very old.

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**Who acts:** oak · **What happens:** have, spread, be · **To what, where:** tall trunk

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, What the Second Mouse Had to Tell. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (oak), 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:pg27200:180:39
# text = It had a tall trunk with a wide-spreading top, and was very old.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	tall	tall	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	trunk	trunk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
6	with	with	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
8	wide	wide	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	spreading	spread	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	11	amod	_	_
11	top	top	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
14	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
15	very	very	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
16	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | oak | a tall trunk |  |  |  | with a spreading top | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent trunk=Patient |
| 2 | **spread** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | old *property* | 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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