---
title: They obeyed this order for a very short time, and then forgot it alt… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They obeyed this order for a very short time, and then forgot it altogether. Who acts: horses. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Ib and Little Christina, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Ib and Little Christina, sentence 30

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They obeyed this order for a very short time, and then forgot it altogether.

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**Who acts:** horses · **What happens:** obey, forget · **To what, where:** order

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Ib and Little Christina. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (horses), 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:pg27200:51:30
# text = They obeyed this order for a very short time, and then forgot it altogether.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	obeyed	obey	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	4	det	_	_
4	order	order	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	for	for	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
7	very	very	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	short	short	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
12	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	13	advmod	_	_
13	forgot	forget	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	altogether	altogether	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **obey** | past | horses *= horse* | this order |  |  | time |  | vn abide\_by-93.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent order=Theme |
| 2 | **forget** | past | horses *= horse* *not said here* | order |  |  | then | altogether *property* | 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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