---
title: Drops of water lay upon them; whether they were dew-drops or tears n… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Drops of water lay upon them; whether they were dew-drops or tears no one could say. Who acts: Drops, one. 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.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/208/80/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Wild Swans, part 1, sentence 80

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Drops of water lay upon them; whether they were dew-drops or tears no one could say.

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**Who acts:** Drops, one · **What happens:** lay, be, tear, say · **To what, where:** dew drops · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Drops, one), 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:pg27200:208:80
# text = Drops of water lay upon them; whether they were dew-drops or tears no one could say.
1	Drops	drop	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
2	of	of	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
3	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	nmod	_	_
4	lay	lay	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	whether	whether	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
10	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
11	dew	dew	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	drops	drop	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
14	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	tears	tear	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
16	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	17	det	_	_
17	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nsubj	_	_
18	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	19	aux	_	_
19	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lay** | present | Drops of water |  |  |  |  | upon weeds *= weed* | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent upon they=Destination |
| 2 | **is a** | past | Drops *= drop* | dew drops |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **tear** | present | Drops of water *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | could | no one |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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