---
title: "Certainly," he replied, and commenced at once, asking them to liste… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Certainly," he replied, and commenced at once, asking them to listen attentively. " Who acts: king. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Flying Trunk, 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/pg27200/35/34/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Flying Trunk, sentence 34

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"Certainly," he replied, and commenced at once, asking them to listen attentively. "

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**Who acts:** king · **What happens:** reply, commence, ask, listen · **To what, where:** stories

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Flying Trunk. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (king), 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:pg27200:35:34
# text = "Certainly," he replied, and commenced at once, asking them to listen attentively. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Certainly	certainly	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	commenced	commence	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	parataxis	_	_
10	at	at	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
13	asking	ask	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	9	conj	_	_
14	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	listen	listen	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
17	attentively	attentively	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
19	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | king |  |  |  |  | certainly *property* | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **commence** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |
| 3 | **ask** *speech: ask* | gerund |  |  | stories *= story* |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S\_INF»: agent=Agent they=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 4 | **listen** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | attentively *property* | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent |

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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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