---
title: "Modestia is a beautiful virtue," said the man. " — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Modestia is a beautiful virtue," said the man. " Who acts: Modestia, beautiful virtue. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, What Happened to the Counsellor, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, What Happened to the Counsellor, sentence 74

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"Modestia is a beautiful virtue," said the man. "

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**Who acts:** Modestia, beautiful virtue · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** beautiful virtue, man · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, What Happened to the Counsellor. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Modestia, beautiful virtue), 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:pg27200:41:74
# text = "Modestia is a beautiful virtue," said the man. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Modestia	Modestia	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	virtue	virtue	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | Modestia | a beautiful virtue |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | a beautiful virtue | the man |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent man=Topic |

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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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