---
title: Why should I have such a precious thing? — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Why should I have such a precious thing? Who acts: I. 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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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Toad, sentence 21

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Why should I have such a precious thing?

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** have · **To what, where:** precious thing

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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 (I), 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:pg27200:194:21
# text = Why should I have such a precious thing?
1	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	4	advmod	_	_
2	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	such	such	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	8	det:predet	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	precious	precious	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | should | I | such precious thing |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thing=Patient |

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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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