---
title: The gracious lady seemed like a flower that was rather stiff in the… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The gracious lady seemed like a flower that was rather stiff in the stalk. Who acts: gracious lady, flower. 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.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Story of the Wind, sentence 33

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The gracious lady seemed like a flower that was rather stiff in the stalk.

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**Who acts:** gracious lady, flower · **What happens:** seem, be · **To what, where:** stalk

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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 (gracious lady, flower), 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:pg27200:212:33
# text = The gracious lady seemed like a flower that was rather stiff in the stalk.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	gracious	gracious	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	lady	lady	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	like	like	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	flower	flower	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
8	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	11	nsubj	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
10	rather	rather	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	stiff	stiff	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	acl:relcl	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	stalk	stalk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **seem** | past | the gracious lady |  |  |  |  | like a flower | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | past | a flower |  |  | the stalk |  | stiff *property* | tree rules |

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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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