---
title: "That," replied the mother, "nobody can understand." — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "That," replied the mother, "nobody can understand." Who acts: mother, nobody. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Little Elder-tree Mother, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Elder-tree Mother, sentence 8

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"That," replied the mother, "nobody can understand."

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**Who acts:** mother, nobody · **What happens:** reply, understand · **To what, where:** That, mother · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Little Elder-tree Mother. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother, nobody), 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:pg27200:72:8
# text = "That," replied the mother, "nobody can understand."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	That	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	_
5	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	nobody	nobody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	12	nsubj	_	_
11	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	understand	understand	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | the mother | That |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **understand** *in a quote* | can | nobody | the mother *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer mother=Stimulus |

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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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