---
title: The forest looked dark, the hard-frozen lake lay like a sheet of lead. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The forest looked dark, the hard-frozen lake lay like a sheet of lead. Who acts: forest, frozen lake. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/214/55/)

<!-- 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 Year](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/214/) / 55

# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Story of the Year, sentence 55

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The forest looked dark, the hard-frozen lake lay like a sheet of lead.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** forest, frozen lake · **What happens:** look, freeze, lay

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (forest, frozen lake), 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:pg27200:214:55
# text = The forest looked dark, the hard-frozen lake lay like a sheet of lead.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	forest	forest	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	dark	dark	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
7	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	frozen	freeze	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	amod	_	_
10	lake	lake	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
11	lay	lay	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
12	like	like	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	sheet	sheet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	lead	lead	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **look** | past | the forest |  |  |  |  | dark *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **freeze** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4-1 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **lay** | present | the frozen lake |  |  |  |  | like a sheet of lead | vn create-26.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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 54](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/214/54/)
- next →: [sentence 56](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/214/56/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of the Year](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/214/)