---
title: Then he took the cat in his arms, but he struggled to get free. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Then he took the cat in his arms, but he struggled to get free. Who acts: Rudy. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, II. the Journey to the New Home, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/53/19/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, II. the Journey to the New Home, sentence 19

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Then he took the cat in his arms, but he struggled to get free.

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**Who acts:** Rudy · **What happens:** take, struggle, get · **To what, where:** cat, arms

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, II. the Journey to the New Home. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Rudy), 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:pg27200:53:19
# text = Then he took the cat in his arms, but he struggled to get free.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	arms	arm	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	struggled	struggle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
13	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
14	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	xcomp	_	_
15	free	free	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | Rudy | the cat |  | Rudy's arms | then |  | vn fit-54.3 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent cat=Value in arm=Location |
| 2 | **struggle** | past | Rudy |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **get** | to-infinitive | Rudy *not said here* |  |  |  |  | free *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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