---
title: They were now so high, that a large ship beneath them looked like a… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They were now so high, that a large ship beneath them looked like a white sea-gull skimming the waves. Who acts: wings, large ship, white sea gull. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Wild Swans, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every c
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/209/19/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Wild Swans, part 2, sentence 19

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They were now so high, that a large ship beneath them looked like a white sea-gull skimming the waves.

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**Who acts:** wings, large ship, white sea gull · **What happens:** be, look, skim · **To what, where:** waves

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Wild Swans, 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 (wings, large ship, white sea gull), 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:pg27200:209:19
# text = They were now so high, that a large ship beneath them looked like a white sea-gull skimming the waves.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
4	so	so	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	high	high	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
7	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	large	large	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	ship	ship	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
11	beneath	beneath	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nmod	_	_
13	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
14	like	like	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
16	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
17	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	gull	gull	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
20	skimming	skim	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	19	acl	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	waves	wave	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | wings *= wing* |  |  |  | now | high *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **look** | past | a large ship beneath wings |  |  |  |  | like a white sea gull | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 3 | **skim** | gerund | a white sea gull *not said here* | the waves |  |  |  |  | vn wipe\_manner-10.4.1 «NP V NP.source»: agent=Agent wave=Source |

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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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