---
title: And they hacked away at him, and they pulled at him, and ate him up,… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: And they hacked away at him, and they pulled at him, and ate him up, because of the little bruise. Who acts: legs. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Drop of Water, 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/pg27200/23/31/)

<!-- 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 Drop of Water](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/23/) / 31

# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Drop of Water, sentence 31

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
And they hacked away at him, and they pulled at him, and ate him up, because of the little bruise.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** legs · **What happens:** hack away, pull, eat up · **To what, where:** magician

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Drop of Water. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (legs), 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:pg27200:23:31
# text = And they hacked away at him, and they pulled at him, and ate him up, because of the little bruise.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	hacked	hack	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	away	away	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	at	at	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	pulled	pull	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	ate	eat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
16	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obj	_	_
17	up	up	ADP	RP	_	15	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	_
19	because	because	ADP	IN	ExtPos=ADP	23	case	_	_
20	of	of	ADP	IN	_	19	fixed	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
22	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	23	amod	_	_
23	bruise	bruise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hack away** | past | legs *= leg* |  |  |  |  | at magician; away *property* | vn cut-21.1-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent at he=Patient |
| 2 | **pull** | past | legs *= leg* |  |  |  |  | at magician | vn push-12-1 «NP V PP-Conative»: agent=Agent at he=Theme |
| 3 | **eat up** | past | legs *= leg* *not said here* | magician |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Patient |

<!-- .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 30](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/23/30/)
- next →: [sentence 32](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/23/32/)
- ↑ back to [The Drop of Water](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/23/)