---
title: They stumbled against the sack in which lay Little Claus, and turned… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They stumbled against the sack in which lay Little Claus, and turned it over. " Who acts: oxen. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Little Claus and Big Claus, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Little Claus and Big Claus, sentence 165

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They stumbled against the sack in which lay Little Claus, and turned it over. "

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**Who acts:** oxen · **What happens:** stumble, lie, turn over · **To what, where:** sack, Little Claus, herd

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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 (oxen), 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:pg27200:71:165
# text = They stumbled against the sack in which lay Little Claus, and turned it over. "
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	stumbled	stumble	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	against	against	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	sack	sack	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
6	in	in	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
7	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	8	nsubj	_	_
8	lay	lie	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
9	Little	Little	ADJ	NNP	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	Claus	Claus	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	turned	turn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	over	over	ADP	RP	_	13	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
17	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stumble** | past | oxen *= ox* |  |  | the sack |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme against sack=Trajectory |
| 2 | **lie** | past |  | Little Claus |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location claus=Theme |
| 3 | **turn over** | past | oxen *= ox* *not said here* | herd |  |  |  |  | vn contribute-13.2 «NP V NP.theme (PP)»: agent=Agent it=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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