---
title: His cheeks were brown, his teeth white, and his eyes dark and sparkl… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: His cheeks were brown, his teeth white, and his eyes dark and sparkling. Who acts: cheeks, teeth, eyes. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, IV. Babette, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, IV. Babette, sentence 8

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His cheeks were brown, his teeth white, and his eyes dark and sparkling.

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**Who acts:** cheeks, teeth, eyes · **What happens:** be, sparkle

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, IV. Babette. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cheeks, teeth, eyes), 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:pg27200:55:8
# text = His cheeks were brown, his teeth white, and his eyes dark and sparkling.
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	cheeks	cheek	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	brown	brown	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	teeth	tooth	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
8	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	_
13	dark	dark	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	sparkling	sparkle	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	13	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | Rudy's cheeks |  |  |  |  | brown *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | Rudy's teeth |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **be** |  | Rudy's eyes |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **sparkle** | gerund | Rudy's eyes *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «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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