---
title: They sat to him accordingly, and saw how he moulded and formed the s… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They sat to him accordingly, and saw how he moulded and formed the soft clay with his fingers. Who acts: lips, Alfred. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Beauty of Form and Beauty of Mind, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Beauty of Form and Beauty of Mind, sentence 72

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They sat to him accordingly, and saw how he moulded and formed the soft clay with his fingers.

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**Who acts:** lips, Alfred · **What happens:** sit, see, mould, form · **To what, where:** Alfred, soft clay · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Beauty of Form and Beauty of Mind. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lips, Alfred), 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:pg27200:7:72
# text = They sat to him accordingly, and saw how he moulded and formed the soft clay with his fingers.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obl	_	_
5	accordingly	accordingly	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
9	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	11	advmod	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	moulded	mould	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	formed	form	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	clay	clay	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
17	with	with	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	19	nmod:poss	_	_
19	fingers	finger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | past | lips *= lip* |  | Alfred |  |  | accordingly *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **see** | past | lips *= lip* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 3 | **mould** | past | Alfred |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **form** | past | lips *= lip* *not said here* | the soft clay |  |  |  | with Alfred's fingers | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location clay=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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