---
title: It was quite charming to watch them at play. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: It was quite charming to watch them at play. Who acts: noise. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Travelling Companion, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Travelling Companion, part 1, sentence 75

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It was quite charming to watch them at play.

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**Who acts:** noise · **What happens:** charm, watch · **To what, where:** deal, play

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Travelling Companion, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (noise), 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:pg27200:196:75
# text = It was quite charming to watch them at play.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	charming	charm	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	watch	watch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	_
8	at	at	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	play	play	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **charm** | past · progressive | noise |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **watch** | to-infinitive | noise *not said here* | deal |  | play |  |  | vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme |

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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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