---
title: Each wished to keep the best things they had. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Each wished to keep the best things they had. Who acts: things. 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/pg27200/38/48/)

<!-- 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/) / 48

# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Goblin and the Huckster, sentence 48

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Each wished to keep the best things they had.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** things · **What happens:** wish, keep, have · **To what, where:** Each, best things

<!-- .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 (things), 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:pg27200:38:48
# text = Each wished to keep the best things they had.
1	Each	each	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	2	nsubj:pass	_	_
2	wished	wish	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	advcl	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	best	good	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	7	amod	_	_
7	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wish** | participle · passive |  | Each |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme |
| 2 | **keep** | to-infinitive |  | the best things |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thing=Theme |
| 3 | **have** | past | things *= thing* | the best things *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thing=Patient |

<!-- .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 47](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/38/47/)
- next →: [sentence 49](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/38/49/)
- ↑ back to [The Goblin and the Huckster](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/38/)