---
title: There's a straw going by now; how he turns and twists about! — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: There's a straw going by now; how he turns and twists about! Who acts: straw, pin. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Darning-needle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Darning-needle, sentence 23

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There's a straw going by now; how he turns and twists about!

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**Who acts:** straw, pin · **What happens:** be, go, turn, twist

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Darning-needle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (straw, pin), 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:pg27200:21:23
# text = There's a straw going by now; how he turns and twists about!
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	's	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	straw	straw	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
5	going	go	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	acl	_	_
6	by	by	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	11	advmod	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	turns	turn	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	twists	twist	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	conj	_	_
14	about	about	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | present | a straw |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **go** | gerund | a straw *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-2 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme by now=Location |
| 3 | **turn** | present | pin |  |  |  |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **twist** | present | pin *not said here* |  |  |  |  | about *property* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |

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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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