---
title: "But I would rather be chopped to chips," said the elder. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "But I would rather be chopped to chips," said the elder. Who acts: elder. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Two Maidens, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Two Maidens, sentence 21

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"But I would rather be chopped to chips," said the elder.

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**Who acts:** elder · **What happens:** chop, say · **To what, where:** elder, chips · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Two Maidens. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (elder), 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:pg27200:200:21
# text = "But I would rather be chopped to chips," said the elder.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
4	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
5	rather	rather	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
6	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	aux:pass	_	_
7	chopped	chop	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	12	ccomp	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	chips	chip	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	elder	elder	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **chop** *in a quote* | would · passive |  | the elder *= elder* |  |  |  |  | vn carve-21.2-2 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the elder |  | chips |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to chip=Recipient clause=Topic |

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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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