---
title: The mayor's great dinner-party to-day ought to have been put off, bu… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The mayor's great dinner-party to-day ought to have been put off, but the news came too late. Who acts: news. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, She Was Good For Nothing, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, She Was Good For Nothing, sentence 53

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The mayor's great dinner-party to-day ought to have been put off, but the news came too late.

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**Who acts:** news · **What happens:** put off, come · **To what, where:** great dinner party

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, She Was Good For Nothing. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (news), 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:pg27200:46:53
# text = The mayor's great dinner-party to-day ought to have been put off, but the news came too late.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	mayor	mayor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	's	's	PART	POS	_	2	case	_	_
4	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
5	dinner	dinner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	party	party	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj:outer	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	_
11	ought	ought	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
13	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	aux	_	_
14	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	15	aux:pass	_	_
15	put	put	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
16	off	off	ADP	RP	_	15	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
18	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	news	news	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nsubj	_	_
21	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	advcl	_	_
22	too	too	ADV	RB	_	23	advmod	_	_
23	late	late	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	21	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **put off** | ought · perfect · passive |  | the mayor's great dinner party to day |  |  |  |  | vn invest-13.5.4-1 «NP V PP»: subject=Goal |
| 2 | **come** | past | the news |  |  |  |  | late *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «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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