---
title: I was before them, and jumped on the back of a chair. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: I was before them, and jumped on the back of a chair. Who acts: I. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, VI. the Visit to the Mill, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, VI. the Visit to the Mill, sentence 52

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I was before them, and jumped on the back of a chair.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** be, jump · **To what, where:** back

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, VI. the Visit to the Mill. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg27200:57:52
# text = I was before them, and jumped on the back of a chair.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	before	before	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	jumped	jump	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	on	on	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	back	back	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	chair	chair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | I |  |  |  | before ears *= ear* |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **jump** | past |  |  |  | the back of a chair |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on back=Trajectory |

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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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