---
title: There could not be a quieter or more steady young man than this clerk. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: There could not be a quieter or more steady young man than this clerk. Who acts: quieter steady young man. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Clerk's Transformation, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Clerk's Transformation, sentence 11

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There could not be a quieter or more steady young man than this clerk.

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**Who acts:** quieter steady young man · **What happens:** not be

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Clerk's Transformation. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (quieter steady young man), 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:pg27200:44:11
# text = There could not be a quieter or more steady young man than this clerk.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	4	expl	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
6	quieter	quiet	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	11	amod	_	_
7	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	more	more	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	6	conj	_	_
9	steady	steady	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
10	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
12	than	than	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	14	det	_	_
14	clerk	clerk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **can** | could | a quieter steady young man than this clerk |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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