---
title: They were disputing about our earth, and doubted whether it could be… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They were disputing about our earth, and doubted whether it could be inhabited. Who acts: inhabitants. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Watchman's Adventures, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Watchman's Adventures, sentence 74

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They were disputing about our earth, and doubted whether it could be inhabited.

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**Who acts:** inhabitants · **What happens:** dispute, doubt, inhabit · **To what, where:** spirit

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Watchman's Adventures. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (inhabitants), 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:pg27200:42:74
# text = They were disputing about our earth, and doubted whether it could be inhabited.
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	disputing	dispute	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	about	about	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	earth	earth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	doubted	doubt	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
10	whether	whether	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj:pass	_	_
12	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
13	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	aux:pass	_	_
14	inhabited	inhabit	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **dispute** | past · progressive | inhabitants *= inhabitant* |  |  |  |  | about our earth | vn battle-36.4 «NP V PP.theme NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent about earth=Theme |
| 2 | **doubt** | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn judgment-33.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **inhabit** | could · passive |  | spirit |  |  |  |  | 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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