---
title: "The poor little children, how happy they are--how merrily they play… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "The poor little children, how happy they are--how merrily they play and romp together! Who acts: poor little children, children. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, By the Almshouse Window, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, By the Almshouse Window, sentence 8

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"The poor little children, how happy they are--how merrily they play and romp together!

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**Who acts:** poor little children, children · **What happens:** be, play, romp

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, By the Almshouse Window. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor little children, children), 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:pg27200:3:8
# text = "The poor little children, how happy they are--how merrily they play and romp together!
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
3	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
4	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	8	advmod	_	_
8	happy	happy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	13	advmod	_	_
13	merrily	merrily	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
14	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	play	play	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	parataxis	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	romp	romp	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	conj	_	_
18	together	together	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | present | the poor little children |  |  |  |  | happy *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **play** *in a quote* | present | children *= child* |  |  |  |  | merrily *property* | vn performance-26.7-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **romp** *in a quote* | present | children *= child* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | together *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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