---
title: He kept down the tears, but it was easy to see how sorrowful he was. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: He kept down the tears, but it was easy to see how sorrowful he was. Who acts: Knud. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Under the Willow-tree, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Under the Willow-tree, part 2, sentence 27

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He kept down the tears, but it was easy to see how sorrowful he was.

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**Who acts:** Knud · **What happens:** keep down, be, see · **To what, where:** tears · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Under the Willow-tree, 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 (Knud), 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:pg27200:203:27
# text = He kept down the tears, but it was easy to see how sorrowful he was.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	kept	keep	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	down	down	ADP	RP	_	2	compound:prt	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	tears	tear	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	expl	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	easy	easy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	parataxis	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	csubj	_	_
13	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	14	advmod	_	_
14	sorrowful	sorrowful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	ccomp	_	_
15	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
16	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **keep down** | past | Knud | the tears |  |  |  |  | vn subjugate-42.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tear=Patient |
| 2 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | easy *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **see** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 4 | **is** | past | Knud |  |  |  |  | sorrowful *property* | tree rules |

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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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