---
title: "We think it is a very miserable story," said the rats. " — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "We think it is a very miserable story," said the rats. " Who acts: We, less, rats. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Fir Tree, 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/pg27200/33/130/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Fir Tree, sentence 130

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"We think it is a very miserable story," said the rats. "

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**Who acts:** We, less, rats · **What happens:** think, be, say · **To what, where:** miserable story · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Fir Tree. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We, less, rats), 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:pg27200:33:130
# text = "We think it is a very miserable story," said the rats. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	think	think	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	ccomp	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
7	very	very	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	miserable	miserable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	rats	rat	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **think** *speech: other* *in a quote* | present | We |  |  |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | less | a miserable story |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the rats |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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