---
title: They were going to hear the clergyman preach. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They were going to hear the clergyman preach. Who acts: bells, clergyman. 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 8

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They were going to hear the clergyman preach.

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**Who acts:** bells, clergyman · **What happens:** go, hear, preach · **To what, where:** clergyman

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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 (bells, clergyman), 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:pg27200:71:8
# text = They were going to hear the clergyman preach.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	going	go	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	hear	hear	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	clergyman	clergyman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	preach	preach	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | past · progressive | bells *= bell* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **hear** | to-infinitive | bells *= bell* *not said here* | the clergyman |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **preach** *speech: other* | infinitive | the clergyman *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn lecture-37.11-1 «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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