---
title: "What is it o'clock, watchman?" inquired a passenger. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "What is it o'clock, watchman?" inquired a passenger. Who acts: o'clock. 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 81

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"What is it o'clock, watchman?" inquired a passenger.

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**Who acts:** o'clock · **What happens:** be, inquire · **To what, where:** o'clock, passenger · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (o'clock), 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:pg27200:42:81
# text = "What is it o'clock, watchman?" inquired a passenger.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	5	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	o'clock	o'clock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	watchman	watchman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
10	inquired	inquire	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	passenger	passenger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## 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 |  | o'clock and watchman |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **inquire** *speech: other* | past | o'clock and watchman |  | a passenger |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent passenger=Recipient |

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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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