---
title: Truth is not always agreeable, but truth is above everything else, a… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Truth is not always agreeable, but truth is above everything else, as the old owl said. Who acts: Truth, old owl. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, What the Fourth Mouse, Who Spoke Before the Third, Had to Tell, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of e
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, What the Fourth Mouse, Who Spoke Before the Third, Had to Tell, sentence 45

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Truth is not always agreeable, but truth is above everything else, as the old owl said.

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**Who acts:** Truth, old owl · **What happens:** not be, be, say · **To what, where:** everything · **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 Fourth Mouse, Who Spoke Before the Third, 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 (Truth, old owl), 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:pg27200:181:45
# text = Truth is not always agreeable, but truth is above everything else, as the old owl said.
1	Truth	Truth	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
4	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	5	advmod	_	_
5	agreeable	agreeable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
8	truth	truth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
9	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
10	above	above	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	everything	everything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Tot	5	conj	_	_
12	else	else	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
14	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
16	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	owl	owl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
18	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** | present | Truth |  |  |  |  | agreeable, always *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | present | truth |  |  | everything |  | else *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the old owl |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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