---
title: They said nothing at all; they were so clever! — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They said nothing at all; they were so clever! Who acts: Butterflies. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Dryad, part 1, 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/pg27200/24/26/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Dryad, part 1, sentence 26

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They said nothing at all; they were so clever!

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**Who acts:** Butterflies · **What happens:** say, be · **To what, where:** nothing, all · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Dryad, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Butterflies), 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:pg27200:24:26
# text = They said nothing at all; they were so clever!
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	2	obj	_	_
4	at	at	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	3	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	10	punct	_	_
7	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
8	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
9	so	so	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	clever	clever	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Butterflies *= butterfly* | nothing |  | all |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent nothing=Topic |
| 2 | **is** | past | Butterflies *= butterfly* |  |  |  |  | clever *property* | 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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