---
title: Can they do anything more than dance and throw about their legs, and… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Can they do anything more than dance and throw about their legs, and make a whirlwind?" Who acts: dances. 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 70

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Can they do anything more than dance and throw about their legs, and make a whirlwind?"

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**Who acts:** dances · **What happens:** do, dance, throw, make · **To what, where:** anything, whirlwind

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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 (dances), 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:pg27200:31:70
# text = Can they do anything more than dance and throw about their legs, and make a whirlwind?"
1	Can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	3	obj	_	_
5	more	more	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	4	amod	_	_
6	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
7	dance	dance	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	acl	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	throw	throw	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	conj	_	_
10	about	about	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	legs	leg	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	whirlwind	whirlwind	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | can | dances *= dance* | anything |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent anything=Eventuality |
| 2 | **dance** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn modes\_of\_being\_with\_motion-47.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **throw** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | about dances's legs | vn throw-17.1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.destinations»: agent=Agent about leg=Destination |
| 4 | **make** | infinitive | dances *= dance* *not said here* | a whirlwind |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset whirlwind=Product |

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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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