---
title: No sooner were the words spoken than he was at home. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: No sooner were the words spoken than he was at home. Who acts: air. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Best Thing the Goloshes Did, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Best Thing the Goloshes Did, sentence 56

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No sooner were the words spoken than he was at home.

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**Who acts:** air · **What happens:** be, speak · **To what, where:** words · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Best Thing the Goloshes Did. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (air), 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:pg27200:45:56
# text = No sooner were the words spoken than he was at home.
1	No	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	2	det	_	_
2	sooner	soon	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	5	advmod	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	_
6	spoken	speak	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	acl	_	_
7	than	than	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
10	at	at	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	home	home	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past |  | the words |  |  |  | soon *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **speak** *speech: other* | participle |  | the words *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** | past | air |  |  |  |  | than home | 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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