---
title: There was nothing they could call their own, excepting the clothes t… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: There was nothing they could call their own, excepting the clothes they wore. Who acts: nothing, people. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Story of the Wind, 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/pg27200/212/149/)

<!-- 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 Story of the Wind](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/212/) / 149

# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Story of the Wind, sentence 149

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
There was nothing they could call their own, excepting the clothes they wore.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** nothing, people · **What happens:** be, call, except, wear · **To what, where:** own, clothes · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Story of the Wind. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (nothing, people), 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:pg27200:212:149
# text = There was nothing they could call their own, excepting the clothes they wore.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	2	nsubj	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	call	call	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	acl:relcl	_	_
7	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	excepting	except	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	clothes	clothes	NOUN	NNS	Number=Ptan	10	obj	_	_
13	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	wore	wear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | nothing |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **call** | could | people | people's own |  |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent own=Recipient |
| 3 | **except** | gerund | people *not said here* | the clothes |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **wear** | past | people | the clothes *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn wipe\_manner-10.4.1-1 «NP V NP.source»: agent=Agent clothes=Source |

<!-- .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 148](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/212/148/)
- next →: [sentence 150](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/212/150/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of the Wind](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/212/)