---
title: "These beasts are sea-cattle," replied Little Claus. " — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "These beasts are sea-cattle," replied Little Claus. " Who acts: beasts, sea cattle. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/71/183/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Little Claus and Big Claus, sentence 183

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"These beasts are sea-cattle," replied Little Claus. "

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**Who acts:** beasts, sea cattle · **What happens:** be, reply · **To what, where:** sea cattle, Little Claus · **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 (beasts, sea cattle), 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:pg27200:71:183
# text = "These beasts are sea-cattle," replied Little Claus. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	These	this	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	3	det	_	_
3	beasts	beast	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
4	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
5	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	cattle	cattle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	Little	Little	ADJ	NNP	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	Claus	Claus	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
14	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | this beasts | sea cattle |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | sea cattle | Little Claus |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent claus=Topic |

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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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