---
title: And he showed them what it was, and it was a dead crow. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: And he showed them what it was, and it was a dead crow. Who acts: voice, road. 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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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, An Old Story Told Anew, sentence 38

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And he showed them what it was, and it was a dead crow.

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**Who acts:** voice, road · **What happens:** show, be · **To what, where:** words, dead crow

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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 (voice, road), 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:pg27200:28:38
# text = And he showed them what it was, and it was a dead crow.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	showed	show	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	3	obj	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
11	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	dead	dead	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	crow	crow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **show** | past | voice | words *= word* |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent they=Recipient what=Topic |
| 2 | **is a** | past | road | a dead crow |  |  |  |  | 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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