---
title: "Oh dear, oh dear," sighed Little Claus in the sack, as he turned an… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Oh dear, oh dear," sighed Little Claus in the sack, as he turned and twisted about; but he found he could not loosen the string with which it was tied. Who acts: Little Claus, Claus. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Little Claus and Big Claus, with its depen
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/71/163/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Little Claus and Big Claus, sentence 163

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Oh dear, oh dear," sighed Little Claus in the sack, as he turned and twisted about; but he found he could not loosen the string with which it was tied.

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**Who acts:** Little Claus, Claus · **What happens:** sigh, turn, twist, find, not loosen, tie · **To what, where:** string · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Little Claus and Big Claus. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Little Claus, Claus), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg27200:5097`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg27200:71:163
# text = "Oh dear, oh dear," sighed Little Claus in the sack, as he turned and twisted about; but he found he could not loosen the string with which it was tied.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	_
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	3	discourse	_	_
3	dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	ccomp	_	_
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	6	discourse	_	_
6	dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
9	sighed	sigh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	Little	Little	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
11	Claus	Claus	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	sack	sack	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
16	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
17	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
18	turned	turn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	advcl	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
20	twisted	twist	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	conj	_	_
21	about	about	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
22	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	25	punct	_	_
23	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	25	cc	_	_
24	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	25	nsubj	_	_
25	found	find	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	_
26	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	29	nsubj	_	_
27	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	29	aux	_	_
28	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	29	advmod	_	_
29	loosen	loosen	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	25	ccomp	_	_
30	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	31	det	_	_
31	string	string	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	29	obj	_	_
32	with	with	ADP	IN	_	33	case	_	_
33	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	36	obl	_	_
34	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	36	nsubj:pass	_	_
35	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	36	aux:pass	_	_
36	tied	tie	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	31	acl:relcl	_	_
37	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sigh** | past | Little Claus |  |  |  |  | in the sack | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent in sack=Theme |
| 2 | **turn** | past | Claus |  |  |  |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **twist** | past | Claus *not said here* |  |  |  |  | about *property* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **find** | past | Claus |  |  |  |  |  | vn declare-29.4-1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 5 | **not** **loosen** | could | Claus | the string |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent string=Patient |
| 6 | **tie** | past · passive |  | string |  |  |  | with the string | vn mix-22.1-2 «NP V NP PP.co-patient»: subject=Patient with which=Co-Patient |

<!-- .note -->
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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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