---
title: As he walked on, he met a very frightful-looking old witch in the ro… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: As he walked on, he met a very frightful-looking old witch in the road. Who acts: soldier. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Tinder-box, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Tinder-box, sentence 3

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As he walked on, he met a very frightful-looking old witch in the road.

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**Who acts:** soldier · **What happens:** walk on, meet, look · **To what, where:** looking old witch, road

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Tinder-box. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (soldier), 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:pg27200:193:3
# text = As he walked on, he met a very frightful-looking old witch in the road.
1	As	as	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	walked	walk	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	_
4	on	on	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	met	meet	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
9	very	very	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	frightful	frightful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	looking	look	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	14	amod	_	_
13	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	witch	witch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
15	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	road	road	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **walk on** | past | soldier |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **meet** | past | soldier | a looking old witch |  | the road |  |  | vn meet-36.3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent witch=Co-Agent |
| 3 | **look** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |

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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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