---
title: It was dirty work, but they took great pleasure in it. " — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: It was dirty work, but they took great pleasure in it. " Who acts: couple, boys. 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 52

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It was dirty work, but they took great pleasure in it. "

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**Who acts:** couple, boys · **What happens:** be, take · **To what, where:** dirty work, great pleasure, couple

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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 (couple, boys), 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:pg27200:21:52
# text = It was dirty work, but they took great pleasure in it. "
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	dirty	dirty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	work	work	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
7	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	acl:relcl	_	_
9	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	pleasure	pleasure	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
14	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | couple | dirty work |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **take** | past | boys *= boy* | great pleasure |  | couple |  |  | vn fit-54.3 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent pleasure=Value in it=Location |

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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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