---
title: "Can the professor understand the signs?" asked Ida. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Can the professor understand the signs?" asked Ida. Who acts: professor. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Little Ida's Flowers, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Little Ida's Flowers, sentence 51

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"Can the professor understand the signs?" asked Ida.

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**Who acts:** professor · **What happens:** understand, ask · **To what, where:** signs, Ida · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Little Ida's Flowers. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (professor), 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:pg27200:73:51
# text = "Can the professor understand the signs?" asked Ida.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	professor	professor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	understand	understand	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	signs	sign	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
10	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	Ida	Ida	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **understand** *in a quote* | can | the professor | the signs |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer sign=Stimulus |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past |  |  | Ida |  |  |  | vn urge-58.1-1-1 «NP V NP that S»: agent=Agent ida=Recipient clause=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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