---
title: Just by him stood a boy, splashing with his stick in a marshy ditch. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Just by him stood a boy, splashing with his stick in a marshy ditch. Who acts: strength. 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 69

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Just by him stood a boy, splashing with his stick in a marshy ditch.

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**Who acts:** strength · **What happens:** stand, splash · **To what, where:** boy, marshy ditch

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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 (strength), 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:pg27200:44:69
# text = Just by him stood a boy, splashing with his stick in a marshy ditch.
1	Just	just	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
2	by	by	SCONJ	IN	_	4	mark	_	_
3	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	splashing	splash	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
9	with	with	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	stick	stick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	marshy	marshy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	ditch	ditch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | past | strength | a boy |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer boy=Stimulus |
| 2 | **splash** | gerund | strength *not said here* |  |  | a marshy ditch |  | with strength's stick | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in ditch=Location |

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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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