---
title: They had taken it literally, and all things are not to be taken lite… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They had taken it literally, and all things are not to be taken literally. Who acts: beams. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Windmill, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Windmill, sentence 46

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They had taken it literally, and all things are not to be taken literally.

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**Who acts:** beams · **What happens:** take, not take · **To what, where:** body, things

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Windmill. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (beams), 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:pg27200:213:46
# text = They had taken it literally, and all things are not to be taken literally.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	taken	take	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	literally	literally	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
8	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	9	det	_	_
9	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nsubj:pass	_	_
10	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux:pass	_	_
11	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
13	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	aux:pass	_	_
14	taken	take	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	conj	_	_
15	literally	literally	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past · perfect | beams *= beam* | body |  |  |  | literally *property* | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **take** | present · passive |  | all things |  |  |  | literally *property* | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: subject=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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