---
title: "Man is the most conceited creature!" said the Stork. " — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Man is the most conceited creature!" said the Stork. " Who acts: Man, conceited creature. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Toad, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/194/141/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Toad, sentence 141

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"Man is the most conceited creature!" said the Stork. "

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**Who acts:** Man, conceited creature · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** conceited creature · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Toad. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Man, conceited creature), 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:pg27200:194:141
# text = "Man is the most conceited creature!" said the Stork. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
5	most	most	ADV	RBS	Degree=Sup	6	advmod	_	_
6	conceited	conceited	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	creature	creature	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	Stork	Stork	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
14	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | Man | the conceited creature |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: express* | past | the conceited creature |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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