---
title: But the roses would shake their heads, and say, "Eliza is." — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: But the roses would shake their heads, and say, "Eliza is." Who acts: roses, Eliza. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Wild Swans, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/208/18/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/) / [The Wild Swans, part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/208/) / 18

# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Wild Swans, part 1, sentence 18

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But the roses would shake their heads, and say, "Eliza is."

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** roses, Eliza · **What happens:** shake, say, be · **To what, where:** heads · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Wild Swans, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (roses, Eliza), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg27200:208:18
# text = But the roses would shake their heads, and say, "Eliza is."
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	roses	rose	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
4	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	shake	shake	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	Eliza	Eliza	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
14	is	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **shake** | would | the roses | roses's heads |  |  |  |  | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V NP together»: agent=Agent head=Patient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | infinitive | the roses *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **be** *in a quote* | present | Eliza |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/208/17/)
- next →: [sentence 19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/208/19/)
- ↑ back to [The Wild Swans, part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/208/)