---
title: The town was perfectly still when the clocks struck a quarter to twe… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The town was perfectly still when the clocks struck a quarter to twelve. Who acts: town, clocks. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Travelling Companion, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Travelling Companion, part 2, sentence 89

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The town was perfectly still when the clocks struck a quarter to twelve.

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**Who acts:** town, clocks · **What happens:** be, strike · **To what, where:** quarter

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Travelling Companion, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (town, clocks), 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:pg27200:197:89
# text = The town was perfectly still when the clocks struck a quarter to twelve.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	town	town	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	perfectly	perfectly	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	still	still	ADV	RB	_	0	root	_	_
6	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	9	mark	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	clocks	clock	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
9	struck	strike	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	quarter	quarter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	to	to	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	twelve	twelve	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the town |  |  |  |  | perfectly, still *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **strike** | past | the clocks | a quarter |  |  |  | to twelve *result* | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V NP PP.result»: agent=Agent quarter=Patient to twelve=Result |

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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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