---
title: "He plays before emperors and kings," said the town musician. " — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "He plays before emperors and kings," said the town musician. " Who acts: heaven, town musician. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Golden Treasure, 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/pg27200/39/161/)

<!-- 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 Golden Treasure](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/39/) / 161

# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Golden Treasure, sentence 161

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"He plays before emperors and kings," said the town musician. "

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** heaven, town musician · **What happens:** play, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Golden Treasure. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (heaven, town musician), 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:pg27200:39:161
# text = "He plays before emperors and kings," said the town musician. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	plays	play	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	before	before	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	emperors	emperor	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	kings	king	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	town	town	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	_
13	musician	musician	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **play** *in a quote* | present | heaven |  |  |  | before emperors and kings |  | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the town musician |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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 160](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/39/160/)
- next →: [sentence 162](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/39/162/)
- ↑ back to [The Golden Treasure](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/39/)