---
title: Little boys and girls fell over their own toes into the gutter, old… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Little boys and girls fell over their own toes into the gutter, old women dispensed digs with their elbows, and looked sour, and took snuff. Who acts: Little boys, old women. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Storm Shakes the Shield, with its dependency tr
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/184/10/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/) / [The Storm Shakes the Shield](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/184/) / 10

# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Storm Shakes the Shield, sentence 10

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Little boys and girls fell over their own toes into the gutter, old women dispensed digs with their elbows, and looked sour, and took snuff.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Little boys, old women · **What happens:** fall, dispense, dig, look, take · **To what, where:** own toes, snuff

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Storm Shakes the Shield. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Little boys, old women), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg27200:184:10
# text = Little boys and girls fell over their own toes into the gutter, old women dispensed digs with their elbows, and looked sour, and took snuff.
1	Little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
4	girls	girl	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	conj	_	_
5	fell	fall	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	over	over	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
8	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	toes	toe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	_
10	into	into	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	gutter	gutter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	women	woman	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	_
16	dispensed	dispense	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
17	digs	dig	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	ccomp	_	_
18	with	with	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	20	nmod:poss	_	_
20	elbows	elbow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	_
22	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
23	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
24	sour	sour	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	23	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
26	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	27	cc	_	_
27	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
28	snuff	snuff	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	27	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
29	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fall** | past | Little boys and girls |  |  | girls's own toes into the gutter |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme over toe=Location |
| 2 | **dispense** | past | old women |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **dig** | present | old women *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with women's elbows | vn poke-19-1-1-1 «NP V PP.theme PP.instrument»: agent=Agent with elbow=Instrument |
| 4 | **look** | past | Little boys and girls *not said here* |  |  |  |  | sour *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |
| 5 | **take** | past | Little boys and girls *not said here* | snuff |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent snuff=Theme |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/184/9/)
- next →: [sentence 11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/184/11/)
- ↑ back to [The Storm Shakes the Shield](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/184/)