---
title: They dragged themselves along painfully, and stared at the strangers… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They dragged themselves along painfully, and stared at the strangers with vacant eyes. Who acts: men. 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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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, II. the Journey to the New Home, sentence 68

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They dragged themselves along painfully, and stared at the strangers with vacant eyes.

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**Who acts:** men · **What happens:** drag, stare · **To what, where:** men

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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 (men), 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:pg27200:53:68
# text = They dragged themselves along painfully, and stared at the strangers with vacant eyes.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	dragged	drag	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	2	obj	_	_
4	along	along	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
5	painfully	painfully	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	stared	stare	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
9	at	at	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	strangers	stranger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	_
12	with	with	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	vacant	vacant	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **drag** | past | men *= man* | men *= man* |  |  |  | along, painfully *property* | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent themselves=Theme |
| 2 | **stare** | past |  |  |  |  |  | at the strangers with vacant eyes | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at stranger=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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