---
title: It was very heavy and indigestible, but I managed to nibble it up at… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: It was very heavy and indigestible, but I managed to nibble it up at last. Who acts: opportunity, I. 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 54

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It was very heavy and indigestible, but I managed to nibble it up at last.

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**Who acts:** opportunity, I · **What happens:** be, manage, nibble up · **To what, where:** opportunity, last

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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 (opportunity, I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg27200:12424`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg27200:180:54
# text = It was very heavy and indigestible, but I managed to nibble it up at last.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	very	very	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	heavy	heavy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	indigestible	indigestible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	managed	manage	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	nibble	nibble	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	xcomp	_	_
13	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	_
14	up	up	ADP	RP	_	12	compound:prt	_	_
15	at	at	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	obl	_	_
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | opportunity |  |  |  |  | heavy *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | opportunity *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **manage** | past | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 4 | **nibble up** | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | opportunity |  | last |  |  | vn chew-39.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Patient |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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