---
title: "Don't talk nonsense," replied the old gentleman. " — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Don't talk nonsense," replied the old gentleman. " Who acts: you, old gentleman. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, An Old Story Told Anew, 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/pg27200/28/24/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, An Old Story Told Anew, sentence 24

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Don't talk nonsense," replied the old gentleman. "

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**Who acts:** you, old gentleman · **What happens:** not talk, reply · **To what, where:** nonsense · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, An Old Story Told Anew. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, old gentleman), 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:pg27200:28:24
# text = "Don't talk nonsense," replied the old gentleman. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Do	do	AUX	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	talk	talk	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	nonsense	nonsense	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
8	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	gentleman	gentleman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **talk** *in a quote* | imperative · do-support | you *not said here* | nonsense |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | the old gentleman |  |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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