---
title: Like the old minister, he looked and looked but could see nothing, a… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Like the old minister, he looked and looked but could see nothing, as there was nothing to be seen. Who acts: cloth, nothing. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/32/36/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor's New Suit, sentence 36

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Like the old minister, he looked and looked but could see nothing, as there was nothing to be seen.

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**Who acts:** cloth, nothing · **What happens:** look, see, be · **To what, where:** 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 (cloth, nothing), 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:pg27200:32:36
# text = Like the old minister, he looked and looked but could see nothing, as there was nothing to be seen.
1	Like	like	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	minister	minister	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	conj	_	_
13	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
15	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
16	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	17	expl	_	_
17	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	_
18	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	17	nsubj	_	_
19	to	to	PART	TO	_	21	mark	_	_
20	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	21	aux:pass	_	_
21	seen	see	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	18	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **look** | past | cloth |  |  |  |  | like the old minister | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **look** | past | cloth *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 3 | **see** | could | cloth *not said here* | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer nothing=Stimulus |
| 4 | **be** | past | nothing |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **see** | to-infinitive · passive | nothing *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V» |

<!-- .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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