---
title: "Is it really true," he asked, "that you do not know what poetry is?" — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Is it really true," he asked, "that you do not know what poetry is?" Who acts: tongue, goblin, you, poetry. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Goblin and the Huckster, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/38/18/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/) / [The Goblin and the Huckster](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/38/) / 18

# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Goblin and the Huckster, sentence 18

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Is it really true," he asked, "that you do not know what poetry is?"

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** tongue, goblin, you, poetry · **What happens:** be, ask, not know · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Goblin and the Huckster. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tongue, goblin, you, poetry), 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:pg27200:38:18
# text = "Is it really true," he asked, "that you do not know what poetry is?"
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	really	really	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	true	true	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
11	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
13	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
14	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
15	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	16	advmod	_	_
16	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
17	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	16	ccomp	_	_
18	poetry	poetry	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
19	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | present | tongue |  |  |  |  | true *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | goblin |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **not** **know** *in a quote* | present · do-support | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 4 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | poetry |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/38/17/)
- next →: [sentence 19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/38/19/)
- ↑ back to [The Goblin and the Huckster](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/38/)