---
title: The old couple begged him to remain, but words were useless. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The old couple begged him to remain, but words were useless. Who acts: old couple, words. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Under the Willow-tree, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/204/12/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Under the Willow-tree, part 3, sentence 12

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The old couple begged him to remain, but words were useless.

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**Who acts:** old couple, words · **What happens:** beg, remain, be · **To what, where:** man

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Under the Willow-tree, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old couple, words), 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:pg27200:204:12
# text = The old couple begged him to remain, but words were useless.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	couple	couple	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	begged	beg	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	remain	remain	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
10	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	_
11	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
12	useless	useless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **beg** *speech: request* | past | the old couple |  | man |  |  |  | vn beg-58.2-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent he=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **remain** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | the old couple *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | past | words |  |  |  |  | useless *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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