---
title: But then the poor miserable creature could not see. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: But then the poor miserable creature could not see. Who acts: poor miserable creature. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Elfin Hill, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Elfin Hill, sentence 114

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But then the poor miserable creature could not see.

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**Who acts:** poor miserable creature · **What happens:** not see

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Elfin Hill. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor miserable creature), 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:pg27200:31:114
# text = But then the poor miserable creature could not see.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
2	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	9	advmod	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
5	miserable	miserable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	creature	creature	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
7	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
8	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	9	advmod	_	_
9	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **see** | could | the poor miserable creature |  |  |  | then |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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