---
title: His father had been dead some time, and his mother kept no farm serv… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: His father had been dead some time, and his mother kept no farm servants. Who acts: father, mother. 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 94

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His father had been dead some time, and his mother kept no farm servants.

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**Who acts:** father, mother · **What happens:** be, keep · **To what, where:** farm servants

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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 (father, mother), 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:pg27200:51:94
# text = His father had been dead some time, and his mother kept no farm servants.
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	5	cop	_	_
5	dead	dead	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
6	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	7	det	_	_
7	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
10	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	kept	keep	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
13	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	15	det	_	_
14	farm	farm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	compound	_	_
15	servants	servant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past · perfect | Ib's father |  |  |  | time | dead *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **keep** | past | Ib's mother | no farm servants |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent servant=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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