---
title: They set up two looms, and pretended to be very hard at work, but th… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They set up two looms, and pretended to be very hard at work, but they did nothing whatever on the looms. Who acts: swindlers. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Emperor's New Suit, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor's New Suit, sentence 11

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They set up two looms, and pretended to be very hard at work, but they did nothing whatever on the looms.

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**Who acts:** swindlers · **What happens:** set up, pretend, be, do · **To what, where:** two looms, work, nothing

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Emperor's New Suit. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (swindlers), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg27200:32:11
# text = They set up two looms, and pretended to be very hard at work, but they did nothing whatever on the looms.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	set	set	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	up	up	ADP	RP	_	2	compound:prt	_	_
4	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	5	nummod	_	_
5	looms	loom	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	pretended	pretend	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
10	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	cop	_	_
11	very	very	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	ccomp	_	_
13	at	at	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	work	work	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
16	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
17	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
18	did	do	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
19	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	18	obj	_	_
20	whatever	whatever	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	19	advmod	_	_
21	on	on	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
22	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	looms	loom	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **set up** | past | swindlers *= swindler* | two looms |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4-1 «NP V NP ADJ»: agent=Patient loom=Result |
| 2 | **pretend** | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **is** | to-infinitive |  |  |  | work |  | hard *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **do** | past | swindlers *= swindler* | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Eventuality |

<!-- .note -->
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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