---
title: Then came the sparrows again out of the town, and asked, "Who is tha… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Then came the sparrows again out of the town, and asked, "Who is that old man?" A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Story of the Year, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Story of the Year, sentence 148

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Then came the sparrows again out of the town, and asked, "Who is that old man?"

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**What happens:** come, ask, be · **To what, where:** sparrows, town, old man · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Story of the Year. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg27200:214:148
# text = Then came the sparrows again out of the town, and asked, "Who is that old man?"
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	2	advmod	_	_
2	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	sparrows	sparrow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
5	again	again	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
6	out	out	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	town	town	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
14	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	19	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	Who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	19	nsubj	_	_
16	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
17	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	19	det	_	_
18	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	19	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	19	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past |  | the sparrows |  | the town | then; again |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location sparrow=Theme |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** *in a quote* | present |  | that old man |  |  |  |  | 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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