---
title: There was a groaning in the air, and a howling and a shrieking, and… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: There was a groaning in the air, and a howling and a shrieking, and altogether it was a terrible storm. Who acts: groaning. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Storm Shakes the Shield, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Storm Shakes the Shield, sentence 32

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There was a groaning in the air, and a howling and a shrieking, and altogether it was a terrible storm.

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**Who acts:** groaning · **What happens:** be

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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 (groaning), 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:pg27200:184:32
# text = There was a groaning in the air, and a howling and a shrieking, and altogether it was a terrible storm.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	groaning	groaning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	howling	howling	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	shrieking	shrieking	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
17	altogether	altogether	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
18	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	nsubj	_	_
19	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	22	cop	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
21	terrible	terrible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	storm	storm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a groaning in the air |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | past | groaning |  |  |  |  | altogether a terrible storm | tree rules |

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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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