---
title: "Can no one else do this?" asked the king. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Can no one else do this?" asked the king. Who acts: one, king. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, How It Was Prepared, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/182/12/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, How It Was Prepared, sentence 12

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"Can no one else do this?" asked the king.

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**Who acts:** one, king · **What happens:** do, ask · **To what, where:** this · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, How It Was Prepared. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (one, king), 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:pg27200:182:12
# text = "Can no one else do this?" asked the king.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
3	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	4	det	_	_
4	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
5	else	else	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
6	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
7	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
10	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** *in a quote* | can | no one | this |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent this=Eventuality |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the king |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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