---
title: Who is that old man?" asked the sparrows. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Who is that old man?" asked the sparrows. Who acts: 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/214/44/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Story of the Year, sentence 44

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Who is that old man?" asked the sparrows.

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**Who acts:** old man · **What happens:** be, ask · **To what, where:** old man, sparrows

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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: who acts (old man), 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:pg27200:214:44
# text = Who is that old man?" asked the sparrows.
1	Who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	5	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	det	_	_
4	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	sparrows	sparrow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | that old man |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* *in a quote* | past | that old man | the sparrows |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent sparrow=Recipient |

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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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