---
title: He spoke not a word about his old love; for that soon died away. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: He spoke not a word about his old love; for that soon died away. Who acts: ball, that. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Top and Ball, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Top and Ball, sentence 48

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He spoke not a word about his old love; for that soon died away.

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**Who acts:** ball, that · **What happens:** speak, die away, love · **To what, where:** word · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Top and Ball. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (ball, that), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg27200:13333`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg27200:195:48
# text = He spoke not a word about his old love; for that soon died away.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	spoke	speak	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
6	about	about	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
8	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	love	love	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
10	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
12	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	14	nsubj	_	_
13	soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	14	advmod	_	_
14	died	die	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
15	away	away	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* | past | ball | a word |  |  |  | about ball's old love | tree rules |
| 2 | **die away** | past | that |  |  |  |  | away, soon *property* | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 3 | **love** |  | ball |  |  |  |  |  | nom love «feeling transitive»: poss=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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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