---
title: They were telling each other where they had been during the day. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They were telling each other where they had been during the day. Who acts: persons. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, A Beginning, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, A Beginning, sentence 13

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They were telling each other where they had been during the day.

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**Who acts:** persons · **What happens:** tell, be · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, A Beginning. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (persons), 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:pg27200:40:13
# text = They were telling each other where they had been during the day.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	telling	tell	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	each	each	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	12	det	_	_
5	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
6	where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	12	advmod	_	_
7	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
8	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
9	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	12	cop	_	_
10	during	during	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past · progressive | persons *= person* |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | past · perfect | persons *= person* |  |  |  | during each other day |  | tree rules |

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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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