---
title: "Our ball can compare favourably with the king's," he said, and turn… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Our ball can compare favourably with the king's," he said, and turned with contempt towards the gazing crowd in the street. Who acts: ball, footman. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, A Story, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, A Story, sentence 48

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"Our ball can compare favourably with the king's," he said, and turned with contempt towards the gazing crowd in the street.

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**Who acts:** ball, footman · **What happens:** compare, say, turn, gaze · **To what, where:** gazing crowd · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, A Story. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (ball, footman), 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:pg27200:2:48
# text = "Our ball can compare favourably with the king's," he said, and turned with contempt towards the gazing crowd in the street.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	ball	ball	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	compare	compare	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	ccomp	_	_
6	favourably	favourably	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
7	with	with	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	's	's	PART	POS	_	9	case	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
13	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	turned	turn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	conj	_	_
18	with	with	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	contempt	contempt	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	_
20	towards	towards	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
22	gazing	gaze	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	23	amod	_	_
23	crowd	crowd	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	_
24	in	in	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
25	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	26	det	_	_
26	street	street	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **compare** *in a quote* | can | Our ball |  |  |  |  | with the king; favourably *property* | vn amalgamate-22.2-2 «NP V NP PP.co-patient»: agent=Agent with king=Co-Patient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | footman |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **turn** | past | footman *not said here* |  |  | the gazing crowd in the street |  | with contempt | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V PP.trajectory»: agent=Theme towards crowd=Trajectory |
| 4 | **gaze** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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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