---
title: It pricked his fingers, but then he had called it a ghost. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: It pricked his fingers, but then he had called it a ghost. Who acts: calyx, man. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Thistle's Experiences, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Thistle's Experiences, sentence 66

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It pricked his fingers, but then he had called it a ghost.

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**Who acts:** calyx, man · **What happens:** prick, call · **To what, where:** fingers, calyx · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Thistle's Experiences. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (calyx, man), 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:pg27200:189:66
# text = It pricked his fingers, but then he had called it a ghost.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	pricked	prick	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	fingers	finger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
7	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	10	advmod	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	2	conj	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	ghost	ghost	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **prick** | past | calyx | man's fingers |  |  |  |  | vn hurt-40.8.3-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer finger=Patient |
| 2 | **call** | past · perfect | man | calyx |  |  | then |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent it=Recipient |

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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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