---
title: They flew over forests and villages to show what they could do, for… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They flew over forests and villages to show what they could do, for they had a long journey before them. Who acts: storks. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Storks, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Storks, sentence 81

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They flew over forests and villages to show what they could do, for they had a long journey before them.

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**Who acts:** storks · **What happens:** fly, show, do, have · **To what, where:** forests, long journey · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Storks. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (storks), 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:pg27200:183:81
# text = They flew over forests and villages to show what they could do, for they had a long journey before them.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	flew	fly	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	over	over	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	forests	forest	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	villages	village	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	conj	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	show	show	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	advcl	_	_
9	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	12	obj	_	_
10	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
11	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	for	for	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
18	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	journey	journey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	_
20	before	before	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fly** | past | storks *= stork* |  |  | forests and villages |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme over forest=Location |
| 2 | **show** | to-infinitive | storks *= stork* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **do** | could | storks *= stork* |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |
| 4 | **have** | past | storks *= stork* | a long journey |  |  | before forests *= forest* |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent journey=Patient |

<!-- .note -->
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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