---
title: "Melancholy! what do you mean?" the little creature would always rep… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Melancholy! what do you mean?" the little creature would always reply. " Who acts: Melancholy, little creature. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Last Dream of the Old Oak, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Last Dream of the Old Oak, sentence 8

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"Melancholy! what do you mean?" the little creature would always reply. "

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**Who acts:** Melancholy, little creature · **What happens:** mean, reply · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Last Dream of the Old Oak. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Melancholy, little creature), 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:pg27200:69:8
# text = "Melancholy! what do you mean?" the little creature would always reply. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Melancholy	melancholy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
5	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	mean	mean	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	creature	creature	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
13	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
14	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	15	advmod	_	_
15	reply	reply	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
17	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** *in a quote* | present · do-support | Melancholy |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: ask* | would | the little creature |  |  |  |  | always *property* | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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