---
title: The African, with blunt features, thick lips, and woolly hair, sits… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The African, with blunt features, thick lips, and woolly hair, sits on the marble steps of the palace in the capital of Portugal, and begs. Who acts: woolly hair, African blunt features. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Thorny Road of Honor, with its depe
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Thorny Road of Honor, sentence 23

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The African, with blunt features, thick lips, and woolly hair, sits on the marble steps of the palace in the capital of Portugal, and begs.

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**Who acts:** woolly hair, African blunt features · **What happens:** sit, beg, step · **To what, where:** palace

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Thorny Road of Honor. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (woolly hair, African blunt features), 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:pg27200:190:23
# text = The African, with blunt features, thick lips, and woolly hair, sits on the marble steps of the palace in the capital of Portugal, and begs.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	African	African	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
4	with	with	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	blunt	blunt	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	features	feature	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	30	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	thick	thick	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	lips	lip	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
12	woolly	woolly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	hair	hair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
15	sits	sit	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	30	advcl	_	_
16	on	on	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
18	marble	marble	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	compound	_	_
19	steps	step	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obl	_	_
20	of	of	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	palace	palace	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nmod	_	_
23	in	in	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
24	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	25	det	_	_
25	capital	capital	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	nmod	_	_
26	of	of	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
27	Portugal	Portugal	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	25	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
28	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	30	punct	_	_
29	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	30	cc	_	_
30	begs	beg	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
31	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	30	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | present | woolly hair |  |  |  |  | on the marble steps of the palace in the capital of Portugal | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on step=Location |
| 2 | **beg** *speech: request* | present | African blunt features and thick lips |  |  |  |  |  | vn beg-58.2-1-1 «NP V PP.Topic»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **step** |  |  | the palace in the capital of Portugal |  |  |  |  | nom step «act transitive»: of=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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